


All Multiverses Lead To Hell

by barbara_princess_of_delphi



Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game)
Genre: All the Chloes left behind, All the Maxes left behind, Alternate Chloe, Alternate Max, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, F/F, F/M, Fluff, Multi-Multiverse Pile-Up, Multiverse, One version of Chloe gets time travel powers, One version of Rachel gets time travel powers, Sacrifice Arcadia Bay Ending, Sacrifice Chloe Ending, pricefield
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-08
Updated: 2018-07-04
Packaged: 2019-03-01 23:16:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 29,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13305432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/barbara_princess_of_delphi/pseuds/barbara_princess_of_delphi
Summary: In her desperation to save both Chloe AND Arcadia Bay, Max jumped back to the bathroom scene 39 times in 5 days. If she could avoid using her rewind all the way through, the storm wouldn't come. Right?What Max didn't know is that every time she changed the timeline, she left behind yet another Max and yet another Chloe, trapped in the universe she couldn't accept for herself.(A happier ending for all those who were left behind: the Maxes, the Chloes, and all those whose love transcended space and time.)





	1. The Girl Who Leapt Through Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Max takes the third option, fighting Fate all the way to the end.
> 
> Or: How the multiverse came to be.

On Monday, October 7, Chloe had told Max how she’d like to drop a bomb on Arcadia Bay and turn it to f*king glass. Four days later, Friday, October 11, Chloe would gladly die in order to take it all back. She wished she could take back the last five years. But she had only been given the option to undo the last five days.

“I’ll always love you… Now get out of here please! Do it before I freak… And Max Caulfield? Don’t you ever forget about me!”

It wasn’t death that scared Chloe. It was the prospect of losing Max, again, this time forever. But if she was ever going to quit being selfish it had to be now. She owed her mother and David at least this much. And she couldn’t burden Max with the guilt of thousands of deaths just to save her.

“Never.”

As the storm raged, both in Max’s heart and in the bay before her, she looked down at the butterfly photo in her hands…

…and in that moment the universe split in two.

In one universe, Max stared, concentrated, waiting for the flash of white to surround her – but nothing happened. _No! My powers… they’re…_

In a panic, Max raised her hand, concentrating… hoping yet dreading to see the world around her run backwards, to see the storm reverse course in front of her. Hoping she still had her powers, yet dreading what it would say about her if her failure to make the photojump *wasn’t* because her powers had gone away.

Nothing happened. Max’s powers were gone.

Any sense of relief Max might have started to feel was promptly shattered by a large piece of debris flying almost right at her. Instinctively ducking as the object sailed overhead several feet to one side, Max could only watch in horror as the tornado reached the town and the buildings began to disintegrate in its vicinity, their pieces taking flight into the vortex.

“Max! Max, what’s going on?” Chloe’s frantic voice only dimly registered amidst the howling winds, but her hand on Max’s shoulder abruptly broke the trance, as if freeing Max from being captivated by the horrifying sight of the results of her powers.

“My powers are gone!” Max cried out as she turned to Chloe, looking anywhere but her face, ashamed at what she had wrought.

“Max!?” The shocked disbelief in Chloe’s voice and her two hands on Max’s shoulders forced Max to look up, cringing in failure. As Chloe began to understand that Max’s powers really had vanished, her expression of mixed horror and relief mirrored Max’s own, and both stood speechless until a crack of thunder brought them both back to reality. “Come on, we need to get to the lighthouse!”

Meanwhile, in yet another newly-created universe, Max awoke in her own body five days ago as a shutter clicked and the flash faded to reveal her trusty Polaroid in her hand, spitting out the very familiar image of a blue butterfly that she had just been holding in her hands a few seconds ago.

And at that moment, unbeknownst to Max, the universe split all around her, splitting into dozens of branches all at once, thanks to multiple actions Max didn’t even know she would be taking two weeks from now – but all of which would act on this one fixed point in space and time. The tear in the fabric of spacetime grew another infinitesimal fraction.

In one of those universes, the first only conceptually but tied with all the others chronologically, Max sat down on the floor and wept, powerful and yet powerless as her best friend’s five years of suffering came to an end; her more-than-best-friend who would never discover how much she was loved, never become the selfless hero who would willingly die to save her parents and hometown from a devastating storm. She flash-forwarded to the end of the week and attended Chloe’s funeral, all in a dazed, numb state. A familiar blue butterfly landed on the casket and flapped its wings, as if beckoning to her.

The next several days passed in a blur. Max lived through them as herself, without any rewinds or photojumps, but she might as well have been her autopilot-self the whole time. The more she thought about it – what else could she think of? – the more she began to question how easily she’d bought Warren’s completely unsupported insinuation that this was really the only way to prevent the storm. Hadn’t she seen the storm even before Chloe died for the first time? If she really hadn’t been meant to save Chloe, what was the point of being given these powers in the first place? She never asked for them. In fact, if she hadn’t had them, she wouldn’t have lost so much, because she would never have fallen in love – or rather, discovered the love she’d already had with Chloe even since before they had the words for it.

It was all just too convenient for this to be the right solution. There was no way the universe would give her power to save Chloe and not let her use it. What if Arcadia Bay was meant to be destroyed in the first place, and by preventing the tornado she’d just mucked things up even more, in some way that she couldn’t see yet?

It was crazy, and self-serving, and she knew it, but she couldn’t get these questions out of her head. There were a million more things she could’ve done to try to save both Chloe and the town. Or at least try to get more people out of the way of the storm. In those last hours of her week in hell, the worst and best week of her life, she hadn’t even thought to try to evacuate the town. Maybe she could have saved Joyce and Warren, at least. This time around, she could tell them about a perfectly built storm shelter.

It was too obvious not to give it a shot. Chloe had been noble enough to sacrifice herself. Max owed her at least some kind of assurance that there really had been no alternative.

One week after the funeral, Max sat down at her computer and typed out a series of letters. She would risk just one more use of her power, only the minimum necessary to accomplish her mission. The letters would hopefully do the rest. She hoped the storm might not come if she only used one photo-jump and no rewinds, but if it did, at least some of the townspeople would hopefully escape with enough warning.

One more time, Max focused on the butterfly photo in her hands, willing herself back into the place of her frequent nightmares. Her world faded to white, and once more she found herself with her camera in hand, the most important photo she would ever take falling to the floor in front of her. (Once more, in the universe she’d just left behind, a newly powerless autopilot-Max sat distraught in her room, regretting not having tried harder to make things right while she still had those powers; and now it was too late.)

Quickly, Max snatched up the butterfly photo and pocketed it. Just as quickly she realized that the sealed envelopes with the she’d printed out and kept in her jacket were no longer on her – fine, she had known that was how her powers worked anyway, it’d been only wishful thinking that maybe just this once she could take something through a photojump. She drew her cellphone and began frantically writing her text to David Madsen, an anonymous tip that she knew he would act on because she’d seen the results in another timeline. As the bathroom door clanged open and Nathan Prescott tried and failed to calm himself down, Max double-checked the phone number one last time and hit “Send”.

Tuning out Nathan’s panic just around the corner, Max hurriedly scrolled through her texts to find Warren, her thumbs flying as she warned him to look for snow, or an eclipse, or two moons, telling him that these were signs of a tornado that would destroy the entire town, and that she needed him to get everyone out of Arcadia Bay. Max was still typing when the bathroom door opened again. She froze, and the sound of a stall door banging shut reached her ears. She glanced down at her half-complete text and put it away. Chloe was more important.

Max stepped out right in front of Chloe as she approached the last stall door. Chloe stopped short.

“Max!?”

Though Max had arrived with a plan sketched out in her head, she decided she could afford to follow her heart for a moment. She allowed her elation to move her and rushed to embrace Chloe in a bone-crushing hug, which her thoroughly confused and still shocked friend took a second to return.

“Chloe, I’m so happy to see you again…” Max whispered into her ear. “But I only have a minute and I have to tell you some things.”

As Max took a deep breath, relishing the familiar scent of her Chloe and her blue hair, her eyes refocused over Chloe’s shoulder and suddenly as if for the first time she noticed Nathan Prescott staring at her a few feet away, his nervousness long since faded into confusion. Max quickly took a step back and didn’t have to entirely feign her shock as she executed the next part of her plan, to get rid of Nathan so she could give Chloe the secret-tips-from-the-future that she needed to.

“Nathan! What are you doing here!? Get out of the girls’ bathroom!”

For a moment Nathan looked indignant, as if he was about to demand to know what Max was doing there, or accuse her of being part of Chloe’s scheme. For a moment Max tensed, fearing she’d made a deadly mistake trying to embarrass him out of the way. She’d forgotten how unstable the boy was. Fortunately, Nathan seemed to change his mind an instant later, realizing that he couldn’t very well threaten the blue-haired punk out of trying to blackmail him when they weren’t alone – especially not if the only witness was clearly going to be against him. He bit back a possible retort and retreated to the door, sending Max an intimidating glare as he departed.

The moment the door closed Max pulled out her phone, turning to a still confused Chloe to begin explaining the events of the upcoming week.

“Max, where have you been?”

“Chloe, I’m sorry I left, I’m sorry I was too chickenshit to tell you when I got back, but I’m from the future and I need to tell you…”

The universe in which Max texted David the location of the Dark Room, then texted Warren to warn him about the storm, while talking Chloe through all the upcoming events and explaining that she would lose all her memories at a certain time on the afternoon of Saturday October 19, also turned out to be a universe in which a freak tornado claimed the lives of 4,407-and-counting residents of Arcadia Bay, ranging in ages from 5 months to 76 years. About 140 residents had believed Warren (or at least humored him) and taken shelter, using either their own basements or the Prescotts’ storm bunker. Another 700 or so were unaccounted for.

Max checked her texts, hoping everyone she knew had made it through. Her hopes were immediately dashed. During the storm, Jefferson had escaped from his prison transport on the way to his court indictment. During the chaos of the following week, David Madsen was found dead with a gunshot to the head while helping with rescue efforts. The fugitive Jefferson was the obvious suspect, since David’s investigation had played the key role in getting Jefferson arrested.

Max knew she couldn’t let David stay dead and Jefferson free to harm even more people. She would have to try again.

On the evening of Saturday October 19, Max dived back into the butterfly photo yet again, leaving behind the timeline in which Jefferson escaped justice, to create and jump into yet another of the dozens of timelines branching out from that moment on Monday October 7. This time, after repeating her previous actions, she also warned Chloe that Jefferson would escape during the storm. She made Chloe promise to tell autopilot-Max about this, so that they could warn David to prevent Jefferson’s escape.

Max returned to October 19 to find no difference. This time around, David had gone along with his police buddies to escort Jefferson, but a piece of debris thrown by the storm had crushed the prisoner transport and overturned it, injuring all the escorting officers but miraculously sparing Jefferson. There had been a struggle, in which David and another officer were killed and Jefferson wounded. Jefferson was captured three days later on the highway to Portland attempting to hitchhike away from the manhunt zone.

For the third time Max jumped back to October 7 to change things, once again unknowingly leaving an autopilot-Max behind in the universe where Jefferson had been caught but at the ultimate cost of David’s life. Once again, she tipped David and Warren from the bathroom, saved Chloe, and explained to her what needed to be done with her autopilot self to keep everyone else alive.

It was a lot of information to absorb for Chloe, who on October 19 of this fourth timeline, ashamedly admitted to Max upon her return that while passing her instructions to autopilot-Max, she’d forgotten to mention Kate’s possible suicide attempt. David had taken a few hours longer to bust Jefferson so as to delay his scheduled court date (and thus, transportation out of town) by one day and avoid the storm, but that extra day meant that the news didn’t break soon enough to divert attention from Kate’s viral video. Autopilot-Max, having been distracted with Chloe’s instructions to prevent the storm, ended up just seconds too late to save Kate despite discovering and exhausting her rewind powers during the attempt. And once again, despite Warren’s and Chloe’s best efforts to get people out of the path of the tornado, the known death toll stood at over four thousand, with another several hundred still missing and more bodies being recovered from the rubble daily.

Fine. Max will remember it, if it’s too much for Chloe. A fourth photojump into the bathroom on October 7. This time, after tipping David and Warren, and telling Chloe what to watch out for, Max sent an extra supportive text to Kate to let her know she’d be fine if she could just hold on until Wednesday. With David busting Jefferson on Tuesday, that should be enough time for everyone to start being understanding about Kate’s video.

Flashing forward to October 19 for the fifth time, Max awoke in the hospital to discover that her autopilot-self’s attempt to be more supportive of Kate had indeed saved Kate’s life but had also placed Max in the wrong place at the wrong time. Auto-Max had been with Kate in her room on Tuesday evening when the police caught up to Jefferson heading towards his car. In prior timelines Jefferson had been arrested in class, with no chance of escape, but this time Jefferson saw a chance to run and took it. In the resulting chase and shootout, Jefferson was killed, but a stray police bullet had shattered Kate’s dorm room window and left glass fragments in autopilot-Max’s neck, injuring her spine and resulting in permanent paralysis of the right side of her body. Autopilot Max had remembered Chloe’s warning that rewinding might trigger the storm and had agreed to avoid making any changes until “real Max” returned to lend her extra knowledge to the decision. That real Max, in turn, vividly recalled how she had felt upon seeing an alternate-timeline Chloe in a wheelchair, and needed little persuasion from this new timeline’s Chloe to agree that this was not the universe they wanted to live in. Chloe dug through Max’s bag of possessions to retrieve the butterfly photo, handed it to Max and kissed her one last time.

From that particular Chloe’s point of view, Max’s efforts to photo-jump failed, stranding them both in the only timeline so far to not have seen either the storm or Chloe’s death. (What they did not know, however, was that that Max would soon die from an unexpected rare reaction to a new medication prescribed by the neurologists, thereby paying the price in full after all.) But from the time-traveling Max’s point of view, she succeeded in returning to October 7 for the sixth time since making her decision to refuse to sacrifice either Chloe or her town.

Once again in the fateful bathroom, Max decided she would try something different this time. As she snapped the butterfly photo, she pulled out her phone and dialed Chloe, whom she knew to be on her way. Seconds later, as the agitated Nathan Prescott of this universe burst into the bathroom, Chloe was picking up the phone. The moment Chloe answered, Max started talking loudly, in part hoping that Nathan would leave upon realizing he wasn’t alone, in part realizing Chloe might not be that happy to hear from her.

“Chloe, it’s Max, sorry I haven’t called until now but you’re about to make a big mistake. Please don’t do…” Suddenly Max realized that Nathan hadn’t left the bathroom at all, instead he was standing in front of her, glaring, as if expecting her to cower before him and vacate the space he wanted. The days when Max was truly scared of Nathan were long past, but the interruption in Max’s train of thought gave Chloe an opening to show her irritation, just as Max had anticipated.

“Five years without even a text and now you suddenly want to talk to me? What do you want?” Chloe had arrived just outside the bathroom by now, as Max could barely hear her voice through the door as well as from her phone by her ear.

Max played dumb in front of Nathan to try to remove him from the situation. “I’m in the girl’s bathroom and there’s a guy here with a gun. I don’t know what he’s doing here but you better find a different bathroom!”

Nathan startled, turning his head quickly to make sure there wasn’t *another* guy. Then he narrowed his eyes at Max suspiciously. This wasn’t going the way Max hoped at all. With a sigh, she raised her hand and rewound. She knew that would almost certainly trigger the storm in this timeline, but she had to figure out what would make the timeline go well first, then she’d take another photojump and do everything right on that attempt, hopefully avoiding the storm.

It took Max twenty-four more photojumps to learn the optimal words and actions to blow off Nathan, calm down Chloe, bust Jefferson, save Kate, warn Warren, and anticipate and pre-empt all of her autopilot-self’s rewind temptations. The hard part was doing it all within the limited few minutes she could spend in the bathroom with Chloe.

It took three more photojumps to get the entire complicated sequence right without needing any rewinds.

And then, at last, on the afternoon of Tuesday October 22, after spending an entire weekend doing nothing but planning her jumps and reviewing her results each time, Max finally succeeded. Upon flash-forwarding back to her “present”, for the 34th time in the last three days, Chloe confirmed that autopilot-Max had not used a single rewind or photo-jump for the entire fifteen days they had spent together since those stolen moments in the bathroom.

Unfortunately, the storm had still arrived on schedule that Friday morning. And since Max had been focusing all her efforts on minimizing the use of her powers, she hadn’t really tried to push Warren or the others on evacuation efforts. When the storm did come, almost everyone had been killed. News reports showed at least 5,000 known deaths and the only survivors Chloe knew of were herself, Max, and Warren.

Max had no choice but to admit that even her single initial photojump was too much. The only acceptable use of the photojump, it seemed, was the one that Max had done on Friday the 11th, when her purpose had been to end rather than save a life. The Fates would accept this solution, but Max still would not.

“Max,” said Chloe, “you’ve done far more than anyone could ever ask of you. Far more than I could have any right to hope for—“

“No,” Max cut off Chloe, sensing where she was going, “this isn’t the end. If we can’t prevent the storm, we might still be able to save more people.”

“But you said even when you told Warren to raise the alarm, most people still died.”

“Chloe, I’m going to save as many people as I can. But if the most we can save is a hundred and fifty, then that’s all I can do.”

They spent the evening planning a new series of photo-jumps. The goal this time would be to bust Jefferson, save Kate, and get as many people as possible to help with evacuating the town or getting everyone into shelters.

On the morning of Wednesday October 23, for the thirty-fifth time, Max held the photo and jumped back into that Gordian knot of destiny, the Blackwell girls’ bathroom as it stood on the morning of October 7. The moment she’d retaken the butterfly photo, Max rushed out from behind the stall, just in time for Nathan Prescott to burst into the bathroom, stop short upon seeing Max casually walk into a stall right in front of him, and turn on his heel. Even as Nathan hastily left the bathroom, Max was already dialing Chloe on her phone from inside the stall. “Chloe, it’s Max Caulfield, so sorry I haven’t called yet but I got caught up in some business. Please listen to me, I found out what happened to Rachel Amber. Meet me in the girl’s bathroom right now. Let Prick-scott go for now, I’ll explain in a moment.” That was all the words Max could get out before Chloe came rushing into the bathroom, looking for her. Max hurried to pocket her phone and greet Chloe…

…and in her haste to put away her phone, accidentally dropped it right into the toilet like a klutz.

Oh well. Since she was almost certainly going to have to fix this next time around, Max did her best to roll with it and persuaded Chloe to help her text David, then Warren, then Kate, as she explained what Nathan and Jefferson had done to Rachel and the storm that would be coming on Friday. The most important thing was that Chloe needed to survive until Wednesday October 23 to give Max the butterfly photo again in case things didn’t work out.

The bathroom faded out and as Max was surrounded by white, she suddenly felt a jolt of very pleasurable sensations from her nether regions – and out of nowhere she awoke to a powerful orgasm that made her moan out loud. The whiteness faded around her to reveal her old bedroom in her parents’ house in Seattle with Chloe’s head of blue hair between her thighs, licking and fingering her towards a repeat finish. A few minutes later, Max lay gasping as she came down from her high and looked up to see Chloe’s face smeared with her secretions, smiling down at her. “Welcome back, Max!” Chloe teased.

“Wowser. Never had that happen coming back from a photojump…”

Chloe’s expression turned serious as she sighed. “Based on what you told me in the bathroom, me and the autopilot-you figured you were definitely going to jump back and try again. So we figured, since she was about to forget everything in an hour and I won’t remember once you go back…" Chloe shrugged, a bit sheepish. "You not having your phone really made it harder to keep everyone who didn’t know me before on our side. Kate didn’t believe the other you when you told her your phone dropped in the toilet, she jumped. We only managed to persuade a few dozen people about the storm. Most of them left town, but there’s 4700 confirmed casualties so far.”

Max sighed, wishing she could stop and settle for what she had in front of her. The temptation was very strong after Chloe told her that Joyce and David had both made it, and Frank had survived too, though with some broken bones after his RV was blown over by the last of the storm as he fled town. But Max knew she could save at least a hundred and forty people; she’d done it in previous attempts. She’d saved Kate before. She owed all these people her best effort. The nightmares would be worse if she let any more people die than was absolutely necessary.

 _Only one person has to die, you know,_ Max’s conscience whispered, but Max shoved down the thought. That one person was the entire reason she was doing this; indeed by this point, was her only reason to keep living at all. _You could save five thousand lives. A real hero would._ “No, I can’t.” Max had accepted that the storm was coming no matter what.

On the thirty-sixth attempt, Max corrected her mistake, shooing Nathan from the bathroom and getting Chloe’s full attention without losing her phone. After telling Chloe all the same things to tell autopilot-Max yet again, Max texted her tip to David, introduced Warren to Chloe via text and let him know they’d need his help (Warren texted back agreeing to do whatever Max wanted before the photojump was even over), and as things went white around her, squeezed off one last message for Kate.

The results were the best yet, as far as saving people from the storm went. At least three hundred people had evacuated and another 70, including many of the Blackwell students, had holed up with Warren and Chloe in the old Prescott bunker. Kate and Frank had been among them, striking up an odd friendship of sorts as they waited out the storm. But there was one thing wrong: Jefferson had escaped, again, when the tornado blew the roof off the local jail. And, yet again, he had murdered David in revenge for the investigation. And there were still 4,165 confirmed deaths plus likely more among the 500 or so missing, lower than any of Max’s previous attempts but still far more than enough to make her a horrible person for choosing Chloe over all of them.

But there was an opening to possibly improve on this result even further. Warren and autopilot-Max had both spent the whole week trying to spread the word about the storm. Victoria Chase didn’t believe them until almost the last minute, but upon seeing for herself that they’d been right about it, she had regretted not believing it earlier, as her social media presence vastly outweighed the rest of Max’s team and might have reached more of the prominent local citizens.

With Chloe’s blessing, Max made three more photojumps. They decided that her goal would be to save David while still keeping everyone else they’d saved; if Jefferson had to remain at large, they could deal with it. Max could take another selfie after the storm and use it as many times as it took to protect everyone from Jefferson until he was caught.

And at last, upon flashing back to late evening on Wednesday October 23, Max was relieved to learn from an excited Chloe that their plan had largely succeeded. The thirty-ninth photojump was as successful as Max could hope for. Chloe was with her in Seattle, and had persuaded Joyce and David to come up for a visit during precisely the time of Jefferson’s escape. Warren and Kate were safe with their families. Autopilot-Max and Warren succeeded in recruiting Victoria earlier in the week using secrets from the future that only a time traveler could have known, and together they managed to get enough publicity that almost 700 Arcadians had been ready to hide out or flee the town at the start of the storm on Friday morning. Most surviving locals were still living out of their basements or in makeshift tents, helping with recovery efforts where able. Almost everyone else had been confirmed dead, with fewer than 200 unaccounted for.

As the authorities continued hunting for Jefferson, Max took a selfie with Chloe in what felt like the first time in many months. Autopilot-Max had taken several since the bathroom incident, of course, but the “real” Max hadn’t been there for them.

It seemed that SuperMax had finally succeeded in her mission. Sure, she’d ultimately traded 4,047 innocent Arcadian lives to save Chloe and Joyce and David and almost everyone she knew personally. But she would take that guilt over life without Chloe any day of the week.

But then, two days later, on Friday, October 25, out of a clear sky at 11:00am, a freak EF-6 tornado suddenly descended on Seattle, Washington.

There was no warning, no chance to evacuate. There had been no eclipses or double moons, no dead birds or beached whales – the Caulfields’ house right on the edge of the tornado’s path, half torn away, half still standing – Joyce and Ryan both hospitalized with multiple injuries, their spouses coping with each other’s help – and by nightfall, a terrified Chloe and Max huddled together next to one of their parents’ hospital bed, watching the evening news as it reported an estimated 100,000 deaths and more than 250,000 still missing; the death toll rising by the minute as more bodies were recovered.

Chloe offered her life, yet again. Max refused, yet again.

It was time for more desperate, more inventive solutions. Perhaps it was Jefferson escaping justice that had brought divine wrath upon them. But then again, the storm often seemed to have helped Jefferson escape. Perhaps the Prescotts’ corruption needed to be brought down as well? But Sean Prescott was still missing two weeks after the storm passed and looked increasingly likely to have been one of the casualties, the storm shelter on his estate having been found empty and the mansion itself reduced to rubble that would take weeks to finish searching.

Max photojumped back to her selfie from Wednesday, October 23 and told past Chloe their new plan, courtesy of the future Max and future Chloe. They were going to leave Seattle early and hope that whatever supernatural force held a grudge with them would chase them, instead of punishing an innocent city.

Upon flash-forwarding back to October 25, Max found herself with Chloe in a motel room in Portland. There was no storm that night. But in the middle of the night, a section of the ceiling collapsed – right on top of them. Max awoke with a scream, crushed under several heavy wood beams, Chloe unconscious next to her in bed and bleeding from a large dent in her head made by a ceiling rafter.

With a scream, Max rewound until the ceiling fixed itself, grabbed Chloe and rolled them both off the bed, hitting the floor with a painful thump just as the roof caved in. The impact shook Chloe awake, but even if it hadn’t, the shaking of the floor certainly would have.

It had been a low-magnitude earthquake, but the cheap motel’s buildings had been poorly maintained over time.

For the next three years Max continued to save Chloe at least twice a month, sometimes three or four times. Chloe did her best to be careful when she saw how much stress it was causing Max, but there was nothing they could do about their bad luck.

Chloe became accustomed to following instructions from future Maxes several times a month, reporting the updates to her autopilot-Max as appropriate. Every time she took a selfie with Max she would pause, watching for some warning or tip that would save her life. Sometimes Max would shift positions in the blink of an eye, or unexpectedly yell at her to step aside or get down; almost always something dangerous would happen in the space she vacated.

Every time, there was a Max left behind with a Chloe whom death had finally caught up to. But the traveling Max never knew.

The real Max, and her final Chloe, finally ran out of time. Chloe began feeling ill one day and went to the hospital with Max in tow. One CT scan later, at the age of 22, Chloe was diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer.

Two months later, Max held Chloe’s hand and kissed her goodbye. Five days later, with all her affairs in order, and letters in the mail to her parents in Seattle and to Joyce and David in the newly reconstructed Arcadia Bay, Max took one last desperate shot.

From her pocket she drew the first photograph she’d ever taken of herself after moving to Seattle at age 13. She had been keeping this photograph with her ever since Chloe’s terminal diagnosis, for precisely this occasion.

Focusing on the picture, Max found herself in her room, 13 years old again – and then picked up her Nokia brick phone and dialed Chloe’s number.

With their lost friendship restored, Max wrote a note to herself, and left a sealed envelope to be mailed to David Madsen seven months prior to her return to Arcadia Bay. It would arrive some weeks prior to Rachel’s disappearance.

Max returned to her own time in 2016 to find herself in an unfamiliar college dorm room. Her phone now included text conversations with both Chloe and Rachel. Ominously, Chloe’s texts abruptly stopped in mid-2013.

Just above Chloe in her texting app was a line for texts from Joyce. Max opened Joyce’s old texts with a sense of dread that was confirmed by the last few messages. Chloe and Rachel had been on their way up to Seattle to visit Max over the summer, planning to drive back with Max to start at Blackwell. A drunk driver had run a red light straight into Chloe’s truck, paralyzing Rachel and leaving Chloe in a persistent vegetative state ever since. Somehow, Rachel had remained friends with Max, despite being blown off by the rest of the Vortex Club at Blackwell.

Max went straight home as quickly as she could, searching her room to find that photo from 2008 to undo the changes she had made. As she hoped, upon bouncing back to 2016, Max found herself back in her hotel room next to Arcadia Hospital, five days after her final goodbye to Chloe, her diary exactly as she remembered it. The photo of the blue butterfly in her pocket, ready for one final use.

One last time, Max created another branch of the timeline from that morning of October 7, 2013.

In this second-to-last one of the dozens of universes that bloomed into being in that millisecond of destiny, Max blacked out within a moment after photographing a beautiful blue butterfly – and never woke up again. This Max’s own future time-traveling self – the other Max just one paragraph above – had returned to possess her. During her blackout, the Max from three years into the future, variously known as “Real Max,” “Main Max,” or “Alpha Max,” moved this Max’s body out of cover, while yelling with this Max’s voice, right behind a twitchy and highly-strung Nathan Prescott with his finger on a trigger. The Max who belonged in this time never felt the massive punch of a semiautomatic bullet, never saw her blue-haired best friend recognize her as she fell. In her place fell the Max of another universe, who knew everything she did plus far more than she should have known. The long suffering of the “real” Max had finally ended, in the same time and place where it had all begun. But her powers lived on… and the “real” Chloe’s suffering had only just begun.

And in the very last one of those dozens of universes, Max photographed a blue butterfly – and then promptly felt her phone vibrating in her pocket. Shocked to see a call from Chloe, who she’d thought had given up on her years ago, Max answered the phone. Chloe’s panicked voice didn’t let her get a word in edgewise. “Max, thank god you’re still there. You have to get out of that bathroom right now. Your life is in danger. Find me in the parking lot and I’ll explain everything, I promise! Hurry. Now! Don’t talk to Nathan, just come find me!”

This last universe was not created by Max. It, too, was destined to split dozens of times over the following five days, giving rise to another tree of divergences. And in one of the offshoots of this universe, five days later, Max was to hand Chloe that butterfly photo as they watched a tornado shred their home. Chloe would not hesitate to throw the photo into the swirling storm without a second glance. There were only fifteen survivors of the freak tornado in Arcadia Bay that day.

* * *

 Later that same day...

Chloe - the original Chloe who'd been accidentally killed in the original, no-time-travel timeline -  awoke surrounded by light and comforting warmth. The last thing she remembered was an overwhelming pain in her stomach after Nathan shot her. _I can’t believe that bastard actually had the nerve to shoot me!_ The pain was gone, and Chloe looked down at herself – no blood, no bullet wound – she felt completely fine, as if nothing had happened. _Damn, I must be dead. There’s no way a coward like him actually meant to do that. I really hope his daddy doesn’t manage to buy him out of this one._

Chloe was startled out of her thoughts by a booming voice that vibrated through her whole body.

“Chloe Elizabeth Price, welcome to your final judgment.”

"What the fuck?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to my first ever Life is Strange fanfic!
> 
> This story is for everyone who was frustrated by Warren's baseless leap of logic blaming Max's rewinds for the storm (followed by Max and Chloe suddenly accepting a binary choice, despite obvious incentives to the contrary). In this story, Max will systematically seek every possible way to save both Chloe and Arcadia Bay, first by absolutely minimizing the use of her powers ("just in case Warren's speculation is right") and then by trying to evacuate as many people as possible before the storm hits.
> 
> I couldn't find any fics taking this approach, so I had to write it. Please feel free to suggest improvements or even rewrite my fic better than I can do it.


	2. The First Three Chloes and the One True Max

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On Monday morning, October 7, Chloe meets her maker. She is not at all grateful... until she discovers that her quest to find Rachel is finally over.
> 
> Meanwhile, on that same day, the "real" Max finally begins to discover what her timeless love has wrought...

“Chloe Elizabeth Price, welcome to your final judgment.”

“What the fuck?” Chloe looked around in shock for the source of the voice. It seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere; she could see nothing but bright white in every direction. _Are you telling me all this religion crap was true?!_

“A portion of it was true, yes.” The voice boomed again, even though Chloe didn’t think she’d said that last bit out loud. “What is relevant to you is the bit about heaven and hell. Surely you already know which of these you are going to.”

Chloe knew the giant voice was right, and apparently could read her mind, so there was little point in arguing. But argue she did anyway, because what else could she do? “How the hell was I supposed to know? I tried being good and you took away my dad. What was the point after that?”

“Your father was a good man, Chloe. He is here with me in heaven, just as I promised in my Word. If only you had believed too, you could see him again.”

“Fuck you! My life was already hell before you ended it. Do whatever you want, but I refuse to believe in a God that’s done nothing but make me suffer. If you’re really God, prove to me that you’re as good as they say you are, and maybe I’ll listen.”

“My dear daughter… You are far from the worst I’ve ever judged. Heathen though you have become, I see the goodness in your heart. There is a place in hell for those who are already punishing themselves for their sins so much that no additional fire and brimstone are necessary to balance the scales. I forgive you, Chloe Elizabeth Price… but until you forgive yourself, you will never appreciate the eternal life I can offer to you. From this moment forward, the only suffering you shall endure is that which you cause for yourself. I gave you free will, my daughter, and you still have it now.”

The white light faded around Chloe and she found herself standing on a very familiar street. There in front of her was the Two Whales diner, looking exactly as she remembered it.

And right in front of her stood two perfect clones of herself, all three of them staring at each other in shock.

“What the fuck?”

Even as Chloe started to say the words, she heard the words being spoken in her own voice, in triplicate – as her two clones spoke the exact same words, sounding exactly like her down to every inflection.

“Who the hell are you?”

Once again, all three voices rang out in perfect synchrony. Chloe took a step back in confusion and surprise – and so did her clones, copying her gestures precisely.

“I’m Chloe Price. Who the hell are *you*?”

But once again, all three of them spoke simultaneously without missing a beat.

“How dare you…” all three of them started to accuse each other of being impostors. All three trailed off awkwardly as they began to realize they might in fact all be the real deal after all…

Chloe tried to think of something only she would know, some way only she would act, to try to distinguish herself from the two impostors…

“Alright, if you’re—“ Upon finding her clones were still mirroring her, Chloe stopped abruptly, all three of her selves halting at once, then picking up again. “If you’re me, tell me…”

They were interrupted by a voice that they all instantly recognized, even though none of them had heard it for six months. 

“Chloe?”

Rachel Amber’s disbelieving voice floated up to Chloe, who looked up, focusing on the approaching figure in surprise while her two clones both spun around, similarly recognizing their missing friend…

“Rachel!”

All three Chloes excitedly ran the last few steps towards a bewildered Rachel, who froze the moment she heard her name called in triplicate – she hesitated for a beat, seeming unsure, but then opened her arms wide and embraced her apparently triple-cloned best friend.

“Chloe, what happened to you?”

“Got shot by that bastard Prick-scott trying to blackmail him to pay back what we owed Frank,” came the simultaneous response from three identical voices. Rachel’s face fell, as the realization that her attempt to exploit Frank must have caused her best friend’s death brought her crashing back down to earth. She let go of the Chloes in her arms.

“Oh my god, Chloe. I’m so sorry. I was so selfish back on Earth. This is all my fault. You shouldn’t be here so soon!”

All three Chloes got a bit awkward at that, not wanting to make their friend feel bad right away, and all three of them changed the subject exactly as Chloe would in that situation.

“What happened to you, Rachel? I – We’ve been looking for you this whole time…”

“Not sure. I got drugged… they gave me too much I think…”

All three Chloes released from the group hug, sensing a long story ahead.

“I’m guessing you just showed up here,” Rachel said. “There are some things you need to know about this place, it’s not quite like the Arcadia Bay we used to know. Come in for breakfast, my treat.” Rachel gestured to the Two Whales nearby and her three best friends entered through a familiar door.

A few other patrons looked in surprise, and the waitress (to Chloes’ relief, no one she knew) did a double-take, but otherwise the booth with three Chloes and one Rachel went undisturbed.

“Vegetarian bacon!?”

“So it turns out there’s no meat in hell,” explained Rachel. “Forced veganism is part of our eternal punishment.”

“What!? That is so not cool!”

“No, it’s not. That’s why they call it hell, isn’t it?”

All three Chloes grumbled about the altered menu, but eventually settled on the (fake) “bacon” omelette while Rachel ordered a waffle.

“Anyway, so I’ve been here for six months now. Every clock and calendar is magically synchronized to match the terrestrial world. The rest works pretty much like we’re used to back on earth. So far what I’ve learned is, there are only three rules in hell. You can’t die, you can’t leave, and you can’t get high. You get infinitely hungrier the longer you go without food, but you never starve. If you get injured, you always heal, slowly, because that’s how they make you feel all the pain. There’s weed, we actually have a weed farmer outside town who grows hemp – problem is it did nothing for my cravings when I smoked it, even bowls of it at a time. The alcohol doesn’t get you drunk, the coffee doesn’t keep you awake… And there’s a solid ring of fire around the whole town so we’re trapped here forever.”

“So hell is just a shittier version of Arcadia Bay… of course it is, why did we ever think we were getting out of here?”

“I think it’s *our* hell. Maybe everyone gets sent to wherever they’d be most unhappy, and for us, this is it.”

A new customer entered the diner, unseen by the Chloe who was sitting next to Rachel, facing away from the door. But the other two Chloes sitting opposite them saw the new arrival immediately and for the umpteenth time that day, froze in shock. Chloe and Rachel, noticing the reaction of their counterparts, instantly turned to look at whatever had caused it. The third Chloe’s jaw dropped, matching her other two versions.

Max Caulfield stood frozen next to the entryway, staring at Chloe, Chloe, Rachel, and Chloe again, looking ready to turn and flee at any moment.

Shaking off the surprise, Rachel recovered her wits first and rose from the table, quickly closing the few steps to Max. “You must be the famous Max!” Rachel extended her hand. “Rachel Amber, pleased to meet you.” Numbly, Max shook Rachel’s hand and allowed Rachel to pull her over to their table.

“So, Max. What’s your story?”

Taking a deep breath, Max explained everything to the four of them. How she’d been avoiding Chloe due to the guilt of having not been there for her after William’s death; she apologized, again, to the Chloes in front of her, who had died before getting a chance to hear from her. Then, just a few hours before now, when she’d accidentally discovered time travel powers after witnessing Chloe dying, then changed the timeline. Then the storm wiped out the town, and Chloe had begged Max to go back and let her die again to prevent it. She did, but then she tried over and over to go back and save more people from the storm. Every time, she lost a friend or family, no matter how she tried to save them all. Every time, she lost thousands of innocent lives and hated herself for being more motivated to save her few friends than the entire rest of the world. But then, even after giving up on trying to save the town, she found herself having to save Chloe, over and over, from all manner of freak accidents and bad luck; and after three years they finally gave up. Her Chloe died five days ago, three years from today, after a short battle with cancer; and thus Max had put her affairs in order and used the butterfly photo one last time, in the hope that some good might come out of her own death, at last.

The three Chloes at the table were captivated by Max’s story, and now a little embarrassed that they had been so hung up on Rachel without knowing how much Max loved them. But Max gave the Chloes and Rachel her blessing; after all, she had only to wait for three more years for her own Chloe to arrive – or perhaps fewer, now that she realized the true horrors of all her time travel in the last three years.

“I’ve left so many of you to die painful deaths,” Max cried, face down on the table while the Chloes on either side of her tried to comfort her, with Chloe and Rachel sitting across from her each holding one hand.

“How many of us are coming?” asked the Chloe sitting across from Max. “Maybe…”

“…we can be prepared for all our other selves’ arrival, and…” this was Chloe to Max’s left, an arm around her shoulder.

“set up some kind of system,” finished Chloe on the right, as she held Max from the other side.

Still teary-eyed, Max managed to compose herself to answer her friend’s question.

“Tomorrow,” she said, “you take me to the junkyard to test my power… you had me find bottles so you could shoot the gun you stole from David and a shot ricocheted and hit you. Later, we were lying down on the tracks, and your foot got stuck, and a train was coming. I had to rewind twice to get you off the tracks before the train arrived. I think those were the first two…”

“Damn. Thanks for trying…” “…That’s really soon!” “First two? When’s the next one?”

“Well, the day after that we found out Frank was sleeping with—“

“Wait,” Rachel interrupted, “Chloe, uh, Chloes I guess… I’m really sorry. I didn’t tell you before because I knew it would hurt your f—“

“Rachel!?” All three Chloes turned to Rachel with exactly the reaction both Max and Rachel knew they would have. Max silently gave Rachel an apologetic look, which Rachel waved off letting her know she was okay.

“I know. You deserved to hear that from me, and I was going to tell you… eventually…” Rachel trailed off as all four of them gave her a look that clearly said ‘I don’t believe you’. She sighed. “You’re right, the old me wouldn’t have told you, I was hoping we’d get out of Arcadia and it’d never come up… I’m sorry.”

“Rachel,” Max said, feeling like the adult among them thanks to having lived three years longer and gone through far more than three years’ worth of rewinds, “I know you were Chloe’s best friend when I abandoned her and was too chickenshit to return her texts, and I’m eternally grateful for that. I’d like to be your friend, too. But there’s no point in keeping secrets anymore now that we’re all here, right?”

“You’re right, Max. Chloe, I’ll tell you whatever you want to know after Max is done, but you really were my best friend, I meant that every time I said it. I want to be a better friend to you from now on.”

All three Chloes gave Rachel an identical hard stare, letting her know she wasn’t forgiven, but they were evidently willing to postpone the reckoning for Max’s sake. “Go ahead, Max.”

“Thanks, Rachel.” Max seemed relieved, having avoided a blow-up so soon. “Anyway, in the timeline where I saved Chloe initially, we were looking for Rachel and, my Chloe, I guess you could say, noticed Frank wearing one of Rachel’s bracelets. So we used my powers to break into his RV and found some, uh, intimate photos from Rachel. Later we needed Frank’s info about what Nathan bought from him and when, but he figured out we broke into his RV and attacked us, and his dog went to town on Chloe, I had to undo the conversation to keep him from getting mad at us. So… I guess that Chloe might be joining us on Thursday… and later that night, Chloe and I got duped by Jefferson—“

“Mr. Jefferson did this?!” Rachel couldn’t contain her shock at the revelation.

“Yeah,” Max admitted. “He was the one manipulating Nathan to buy the drugs and kidnap all those girls for him to photograph. We broke into his Dark Room under the old Prescott barn but we still thought it was all Nathan at the time, so Jefferson realized we were on to him, killed Nathan and then tricked us with a text from Nathan’s phone, saying he was going to get rid of Rachel’s body. We ran back to the junkyard to stop Nathan, and Jefferson came up behind us, drugged me and shot Chloe…”

The Chloes were all smacking their heads. “I can’t believe it! You were right under our noses the whole time!”

“Oh my god,” Rachel buried her face in her hands, “I’m so sorry! I shouldn’t have gone along with Mr. Jefferson, I wanted to get out of Arcadia so bad, but I shouldn’t have… He promised he’d make me famous, and in return he wanted some photos of me for his private collection. He showed me the drugs and doses he used, he knew what he was doing… I trusted him. I never even thought about what he was doing to all those other girls. I only thought about me…” Rachel suddenly realized something. “Oh my god, Max, you were his next target, weren’t you! You should be hella mad at me!”

“Apology accepted,” Max said. But Rachel could tell from Max’s distant stare that she’d fucked up big time.

“How can you say that? I got you and Chloe both killed just because I wanted to get out of this town. How can you forgive me so… like that?”

“Rachel,” Max said gently, “you were as much a victim as any of us. Nathan overdosed you while trying to copy Jefferson’s… ‘work’. He didn’t even mean to shoot Chloe, it was totally an accident… Jefferson was manipulating Nathan, pretending to be a father figure to him because, well, you know the Prescotts…” 

“You’re being too kind,” Rachel sobbed. “But, thanks.”

The Chloe sitting next to Rachel wrapped an arm around her, quietly holding her as the regrets flowed freely from her eyes. The white noise of the diner’s lunch rush surrounded them. 

“You know,” Max suddenly recalled something a classmate had mentioned off-hand about Rachel during that fateful week, “I heard a rumor that you were sleeping with Jefferson.”

Rachel’s tear-stained cheeks flushed red, her façade long since dropped. She shuddered at the reminder. “I feel so dirty now just thinking about it, now that I know… He was… I had the biggest crush on him. And things were rocky with Frank around that time…”

“La, la, la, I’m not hearing this,” all the Chloes made a show of covering their ears.

“Rachel!” Max scolded, half-jokingly, coming out a little bit more serious than she intended. “Frank loved you! He gave us the info to help us find Nathan and Jefferson’s secret bunker, even when Chloe still owed him money…”

“I know,” Rachel said. “And I’m such a shitty human being. He let me use him for drugs all these years and I was going to repay him by cheating on him with Jefferson, ripping him off for three grand and skipping town with Chloe.” Both Max and Chloe winced in sympathy, painfully familiar with Rachel’s brand of self-loathing. “Max, you do understand that I’m the reason Chloe is dead now, right? If I hadn’t made her borrow that three grand from Frank, she wouldn’t have been trying to get that money from Prescott today. I killed your best friend, Max. How can you forgive me?”

“Rachel, look at me. Chloe said you saved her life. She would have died long before today without you, and that was my fault for not being able to handle William’s death when she needed me. I owe you, Rachel. And I killed four thousand people so I’m the last person who could ever judge you, okay? I’m just glad I finally got to thank you in person. And we’ve all made mistakes. We can learn together, right?”

“Oh, god, you two.” Chloe’s three voices in surround-sound seemed to jolt Max and Rachel out of their intense exchange. The Chloes glanced at each other and then two of them nodded and the third continued. “Stop it, will you? Nathan was my fault. I thought I could take advantage of him while he was drunk, but he drugged me. I wanted to get him back. Gambling that he wouldn’t have the guts to shoot me, well, I knew what I was risking, so… I’m just pissed that I was *right* about him and still ended up here. But now that you’re here, honestly, that makes up for it.”

“Chloe…” Max looked around in wonder at all three Chloes in turn, all of them with identical earnest expressions on their faces, showing that the other two agreed with everything the first Chloe had said. “That’s so… mature of you… this wasn’t supposed to happen until Thursday or Friday…”

“Excuse me?” All three Chloes spoke in synchrony, indignant. “We’re older than you, Max.” But Max could tell they were being petulant on purpose.

“Actually, not anymore,” Max said, smirking. “I came back from 3 years in the future, so I’m actually two years older than you.”

“Damn.”

Just then the waitress (not Joyce, Max noted with relief) arrived at their table, setting down a familiar Belgian waffle in front of Rachel, and giving each Chloe an omelette. “Sorry to keep you waiting, dear,” the woman addressed Max, offering her a menu. “Would you like to order anything?”

“I’ll have the burger, please,” Max said, without even glancing at the menu.

The waitress turned away before the Chloes could react and warn Max. “The menu isn’t how you remember it, Max. Everything’s vegan.”

“Wait, what?” Max looked up, but the waitress was long gone.

“It’s hell, Max,” Rachel explained. “No livestock, no meat, no luxuries, only the bare essentials for survival.”

“Oh. Guess I’m going vegan, then.” Deadpan Max at her finest.

“Anyway, how’d we get so far off topic?” Rachel asked. “You were telling us a story, Max?”

“Oh, right.”

“Yeah, tell us about the future!” all three Chloes chimed in.

Max took a deep breath and continued her story. “Where was I? …Thursday, I think… oh, right. Jefferson got us both Thursday night, and when I woke up it must have been Friday morning and Jefferson had me tied up in the Dark Room. I got him to let me have my diary, and used a photo to go back to Monday and send David an anonymous tip so he’d bust Jefferson. But in that timeline, I ended up going to the contest in San Francisco on Friday and Chloe was in town with everyone else when the storm hit. So I undid that timeline and went back to almost being killed by Jefferson in the Dark Room. David found us just in time, but the storm was coming by then. I got a photo from Thursday in order to warn Chloe so that we didn’t get tricked by Jefferson again and got him busted that night, but the storm came again on Friday…”

“Do we die again on Friday in the storm?”

“Well, another version of you does. I think. Earlier in the week I tried to go back five years to save William. But in that timeline you got paralyzed from the neck down in a car crash and were slowly dying. Joyce and William were in debt, working overtime for the Prescotts trying to keep you alive. You asked me to end your suffering. I… I couldn’t do it, Chloe. I got the hell out of that timeline because I couldn’t live with what I’d done. I saved William and only ended up killing you… then I killed William to save you… I think the storm killed everyone that Friday anyways so it didn’t matter.”

“Ugh, Prescotts. I’d rather die than beg for money from a Prescott.” “Uh, hello? Weren’t we with Nathan—“ “That doesn’t count!” “Of course not, we were demanding, not begging.”

Max had no idea which Chloe said what, so similar were their voices. But she couldn’t help but chuckle a little at Chloe arguing with herself.

“Okay. So how many more of us are coming?” Once again the Chloes had somehow decided that the Chloe sitting across from Max was now the spokesperson for all three of them, while the other two seemed content to rest their heads on Max’s shoulders, snuggling into her from both sides.

Rachel started counting on her fingers. “Two tomorrow… Two more on Thursday… One from another timeline on Friday… so, five? Are there any more, Max?” 

“Lots,” Max sighed. “My Chloe, on Friday when the storm was coming… she begged me to change everything back and let her die today, like you three did, so that there’d be no time travel, and Nathan would get busted for it and then rat out Jefferson. We were desperate to stop the storm and save Joyce and everyone else, so I did it. Just like that, no storm, Nathan and Jefferson went to jail, everything’s alright… except you were dead and I could’ve saved you. I couldn’t take it. I went back like forty more times after your funeral, trying to save you and avoid the storm, or get people evacuated so not everyone would die… well, I managed to keep you alive that week, but then you started dying in earthquakes, freak accidents, fires, it just never stopped. I spent three years saving you with my rewind over and over. We finally gave up when you got pancreatic cancer. You must have died like fifty times or something. We lived in constant fear that one day my powers would be gone and I wouldn’t be able to save you…” Max paused in thought. “I really hope I’ll get to see all of you, every version of you… so I can apologize to each one of you, and because… I love you. All of you.”

All three Chloes were blushing at those words.

“I think we always loved you, Max…” “…even back then…” “…we were just too stupid to realize it…”

“So, am I just a replacement?” Rachel asked, indignant. The three Chloes instantly turned from Max to Rachel, embarrassed. But the twinkle in Rachel’s eye gave her away, though if it hadn’t, her snickering would have. She’d cornered them and was enjoying it for all it was worth.

“I…” The Chloes stalled awkwardly for a moment, and then all three of them started talking over each other. “Max was my first love,” “but we really did love you, Rachel,” “you made it pretty obvious you didn’t feel the same way though,” “I mean…if you want to…?”

Rachel hesitated, started to speak, hesitated again at Max’s pointed look, and finally said, “If I’m going to be honest with you from now on, I can’t give you the answer you want because I don’t know it myself yet. I really did love Frank, and I’m sorry I hid that from you, but… I did love him, but I wanted to go to Los Angeles, and he didn’t… and like I said, I used him for free stuff like the selfish little shit I am… Chloe, honestly, you deserve better than me. But I’m willing to try, for you. And you’re still my best friend, no matter what. I’m just… confused right now. It’s been six months…”

“Oh,” Max suddenly realized something, “if we’re making plans for this Friday, Chloe’s not the only one we have to plan for. This Friday, when the storm comes, at least four thousand people will die… in every single timeline where Chloe and I both don’t die, and I created at least thirty-nine of those timelines. So if everyone who dies in every timeline ends up here…”

Rachel’s mouth made a little “o” in realization. “We do *not* have the space for that here. It’s going to be standing room only.”

The three Chloes missed that point entirely as they looked at Max in wonder. Rachel and Max both gave questioning looks. After a few glances among the Chloes, the Chloe across from Max spoke for all three of them.

“Max… you chose us… over the entire town?”

Max nodded.

“But I hurt you so much in the process,” Max quickly added. “Joyce died a few times. David died in some of the other times. You always wanted me to save them over you…”

“Max,” something in Chloe’s voice made Max stop and notice the change in atmosphere at their table. All three Chloes were looking at her with such reverence and adoration that Max was reminded of her own older Chloe, who (when they weren’t fighting) often gave her that same look, which filled her with so much warmth. Even Rachel couldn’t help but be awed by their devotion, looking from Chloe to Max and back to Chloe with envy and affection competing over her face. Someday, she hoped she could love all her Chloes and Max as much as they loved each other, and that they would love her just as much.

The moment was broken, all too soon, by the waitress bringing Max’s burger to the table. The five young women ate in relative silence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note that the first three Chloes to arrive in the afterlife are:
> 
> 1\. the Chloe from the "normal" timeline in which no one gets any time travel powers and Max simply has no choice but to deal with her loss (but also has the least amount of guilt, as she has only the guilt from not having contacted Chloe sooner, but not the ADDED guilt of *actively sacrificing* her for the town)
> 
> 2\. the Chloe from the game's first timeline, in which her death was what unlocked Max's powers (Max then creates the game's second timeline in which she saved Chloe by hitting the fire alarm; that Chloe gets shot by her own ricochet and likely hospitalized, leading to her death in the storm that Friday, while the game's third timeline has Chloe dying on the train tracks... etc etc)
> 
> 3\. the Chloe from the new timeline created by the "Sacrifice Chloe" ending, in which Max cried behind the stall instead of saving her
> 
> These three Chloes are identical down to every molecule and will all act exactly the same, at first... but they will be able to grow and develop independently afterwards, in much the same way as identical triplets.
> 
> There will be many more Chloes, of course (and a few Maxes) - all arriving in the order in which they died. Stay tuned!
> 
> (Also, note that Rachel miscounts the Chloe death toll for the week because she forgot to include the one from Friday when Max is in San Francisco. So there's actually two Chloes on Friday (the wheelchair Chloe and the Max-goes-to-SanFran Chloe) making at least six total for the week.)


	3. The One True Chloe And Her First Max

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When Max finally accepts her fate, it's Chloe's turn to not let her go.
> 
> Meanwhile, the "Real Max" finally discovers the true origin and purpose of her powers...

In a diner somewhere in the nicer parts of hell, Rachel treated her new friend and some old friends to breakfast.

The waitress returned with the check, which Rachel took, just as all four of her friends reached for their pockets to find them empty. “Put it on my tab,” Rachel said. “Sure thing,” the waitress smiled, leaving.

“Uh, wait… how does this place work?” Max asked, a little confused and embarrassed after realizing she had no choice but to let Rachel pay for her. Inside, she was kicking herself for not checking to see what she had on her earlier.

“Oh, right,” Rachel seemed to realize something, “you weren’t here when I was explaining to Chloe. Well, this isn’t the Arcadia Bay you remember. Good thing today’s my day off, let me give you a tour, and you’ll see for yourself."

Max and the three Chloes trailed after Rachel as they exited the diner and stepped out onto the main street of the town.

“The Two Whales is pretty much the only thing that stayed the same,” Rachel said. “Basically, the guy who founded the Two Whales back on Earth ended up here about 20 years ago, and a bunch of his old regular customers who also came here got together and they rebuilt the place. Everything here we had to build from scratch, so most people live in tents or wood shacks, there’s only a few real buildings in town. Our town hall meets here on Wednesday evening once a month, and one of our farmer’s markets meets here too. 

“You remember the junkyard up ahead,” Rachel said, turning north, “we have a forge there now, they take the scrap metal and turn it into plows and metal tools for the farmers.”

“Uh… Rachel?” Chloe’s hesitant voice stopped Rachel from leading the group away.

“That…” Max’s voice trailed off uncertainly, “…’s not supposed to happen…”

Rachel spun around to see what Max and the Chloe triplets had just seen:

Another blue-haired Chloe, holding hands with a younger-appearing Max, staring at them as they slowly approached from the south.

Rachel, Max, and the triplet Chloes cautiously approached the unexpected new versions of themselves. The other Chloe and the other Max stopped several feet away, scrutinizing them.

“Rachel, is that you?” the other Chloe asked in disbelief. “…How are there two Maxes here? How am I…” she pointed to her three other selves, “over there?”

Looking closely, Max noticed the other Chloe’s somewhat aged appearance – a few wrinkles just starting to form, her face slightly weathered – Max tried to tamp down her excitement, reminding herself that this couldn’t be her Chloe whom she’d left behind three years in the future. Yet this other-Chloe looked exactly like the one Max had spent three years saving, and seemed to recognize Max; other-Chloe clearly knew more than the triplets Max had met earlier, and in her eyes Max could see a lifetime of pain and a suppressed hope that was mirroring her own.

The older Max and Chloe began to draw nearer but sprang back as Rachel’s voice suddenly cut in between them. “Why don’t we all come to my place, before any more of you show up?” Rachel’s voice sounded light and joking, though Max caught a suspicious look from the older Chloe (which was missed by their younger counterparts) as they parted.

The group proceeded to follow Rachel up the road for a few blocks, stopping at her small wooden cottage. Rachel pushed open the door, evidently unlocked, and her multiplied friends entered.

“Sorry I don’t have enough chairs,” Rachel said. “You can sit on the bed.”

Max ended up on the bed sandwiched among the three Chloes she’d first met, with the other-Max-and-Chloe each taking one of the two chairs in Rachel’s living room. Rachel reappeared with a pitcher of water and a stack of glass cups in her hands, offering them to her guests. The other Chloe and other Max gratefully accepted a glass each; after pouring them their water, Rachel set the pitcher and remaining cups down on the table, then sat down on the bed, the triplets and Max squeezing together a bit to make room for Rachel.

“Alright,” Rachel said to the Chloe and Max whom she hadn’t heard from yet, “how’d you two end up here?”

“Well…” Other-Chloe hesitated. “How long do you have?”

“Forever,” Rachel smirked, “literally. Though, I do have work tomorrow. But take all the time you need.”

“Okay.” Other-Chloe thought for a moment, trying to decide where to start. “I’m guessing this Max already told you what happened to you six months ago?” Rachel nodded, and other-Chloe continued. “Well, I spent those next six months putting up missing posters for you all over town. I’d lost everyone, at that point, I couldn’t lose you too. Everyone else just thought you skipped town, but I couldn’t let myself believe that.”

“I’m so sorry you went through that because I was dumb and got drugged,” Rachel said. “But thank you for believing in me. I tried to protect you from my screwed up life as much as I could but I should have told you everything… like you would have for me. I just wish I’d learned my lesson sooner before I died.”

“I forgave you three years ago,” the other Chloe reassured her angel. “But I can’t speak for these three,” she gestured to her younger selves, paying close attention to gauge their reactions. From the three younger Chloes’ relatively calm and accepting state, the older Chloe could tell that they must have already found out what Rachel had been keeping from them.

“You’re too kind,” Rachel said. “But go on. How did you live three years longer than your younger self and still end up here in hell on the same day?”

“This is going to sound weird and crazy, unless this Max,” other-Chloe pointed across to the older Max whom Rachel had gotten to know at the diner, “has told you about what I did already, but…”

Other-Chloe took a deep breath, which the older Max sitting across from her recognized as an attempt to compose herself to recall something painful, before forcing herself to continue.

“After six months without any sign of Rachel, even I was losing hope. Frank had given up on her long before and was hounding me for the money I borrowed that we’d never actually planned how to pay back… right, you guys talked about that already. So you probably already know about Nathan Prescott drugging me and, well, when your life is basically over anyways, what do you have to lose? I went for it and tried to blackmail him for lots of cash. He was harder than I thought, surprised me with a gun and had me scared for a bit, but then I realized… I didn’t really care if he shot me, because then all my problems would be over. And I figured he was probably bluffing anyway, because there’s no way he’d actually shoot me at school where everyone would hear.”

Max had guessed as much previously, so none of what the other Chloe said was truly new information to her, but hearing it still broke her heart every time, and still reaffirmed to Max that she’d done the right thing by saving her.

Other-Chloe glanced at her triplet counterparts and could see they were all on the same page as she was; they were, indeed, her past selves, and she remembered how she’d felt at their age, while realizing that her suspicions about the original timeline were confirmed. But she was sure no one else knew how her story was about to diverge from the rest.

“And then… right when I was about to call Prescott’s bluff, this girl—“ other-Chloe pointed to the younger Max sitting beside her – “jumps out behind him and charges at him yelling and screaming. We were both startled, he whirled around and shot her and I tried to tackle him when he turned but I was too slow to stop him firing and then I recognized her face—“

The older Chloe choked up and looked about to cry, as the original, older Max suddenly put the pieces together and her mouth dropped open as a horrifying realization dawned on her.

“Oh, God, no…” _What did I do!?_ Older Max glanced at her younger counterpart who, though oblivious to the truth, had an arm around the older Chloe’s shoulder, comforting her.

“Just when I thought my life couldn’t get any worse,” the older Chloe cried, giving in to her tears, “I saw you, Max…”

The younger Max filled in the story as Chloe broke down next to her. “I don’t remember actually doing any of this, but Chloe says I jumped out to protect her from Nathan and he shot me in the heart. It’s really weird because I must have done it after I blacked out, right after I took this photo of a pretty blue butterfly sitting on a bucket—“

“I’m so sorry, Chloe!” The older Max burst out. “That was me! I hijacked her body with a photo jump and—“

“Photo jump!?” Older Chloe’s shocked stare bore into older Max like a laser. “You had powers too!?”

“You had powers!?” Older Max’s turn to be shocked, along with Rachel and the three younger Chloes. All five of them gawked at the older Chloe sitting across from them.

Younger Max had a look of realization on her face, obviously having figured out the cause of her blackout and her uncharacteristic bravery from earlier that morning. She looked awkwardly at her older self, then down at her hands.

“You were sacrificing yourself to save me,” the older Chloe stated. “…You’re the reason I got these damned powers! I thought I was saving you this whole time!”

“Chloe,” the older Max addressed the older Chloe in front of her, “in my timeline, I saved *you* from being shot, but that Friday a tornado would always come and destroy the town. The first time through, you begged me to go back and let you die, to save the town… and it worked. But I couldn’t live without you, I went back over and over trying to save you and at least some of the town. I went back, told you to help me warn the town and all our friends… we managed to get the death toll down to four thousand and forty-seven. And then I saved you over and over for the next three years until you got pancreatic cancer. I wanted to jump back a year and stop that too but you said enough, and it just seemed so unfair that you were the one who had to die first – it sounds strange, but I felt like I should be the one to die at least once, because the universe was being shit to you. And I had this crazy hope that maybe as long as someone died in that bathroom the storm wouldn’t come. I… wasn’t thinking straight, after you died… I totally forgot to think what my sacrifice would do to you. I’m sorry… I shouldn’t have done it like that.”

“Well, that’s not how my version goes,” the older Chloe said, smirking just a bit at the irony though still rather subdued. “When I saw you die in front of me, after five years without a word, after everyone abandoned me… I screamed. I went insane, I screamed at you begging to know why you’d left me, why you’d come back, I begged the universe or fate or whoever was listening, to kill me instead and spare you… and then it was as if my wanting it made it happen, everything around me started going backwards and blood sucked back into you and you were lifted up and the bullet flew back into Nathan’s gun, and then I blinked and I was sitting in my truck again, parked across the handicapped spaces. And my phone vibrated again and there was the text from Nathan, letting me know he’d be there in five.

“When I realized I might be getting a do-over, I called you right away and told you to get the hell out of that bathroom and find me in the parking lot. The moment I finished calling you I suddenly saw this horrible vision of a huge tornado coming into the bay and I woke up to you knocking on the window of my truck. I took you home before Nathan could catch us and then I showed you my powers and tested them out. I bitched you out for leaving me those five years and you showed me that you’d been holding on to that last photo dad took of us that day… I wished so hard that I could go back and stop him from leaving that day and next thing I knew I was literally falling headfirst into the photo. The flash went off and I was fourteen again with dad showing me the photo for my thumbs-up.

“I thought the universe was finally starting to make up for everything it’s done to me since that day. I was so wrong. The universe was just taunting me…”

Older Chloe saw her “audience” all giving her sympathetic looks, as if they knew exactly what was going to happen next. There was one obvious explanation. “I’m guessing you did the same thing, Max?”

Older Max nodded. “When I saved William, you ended up quadriplegic and slowly dying from respiratory failure. I’m guessing something like that happened to me in your version?”

“Actually, no,” the older Chloe said. “I guess it’s always me that gets the wheelchair treatment. I tried to go with dad to pick up mom so that I could use my rewind to stop the accident, but it turned out I couldn’t leave the bounds of the photo. I finally got him to take the bus instead. Then I woke up in the present again and I was trapped in one of those hospital beds and couldn’t move anything below my neck! And I needed to pee and turns out we had a nurse who had to lift me out of bed, then onto the toilet and she even had to wipe my butt for me, it was so humiliating. I knew I just had to survive long enough to get that photo again and change things back. It was the scariest thing I’ve ever been through, waiting and hoping I’d still have that photo in this timeline I screwed up, because I couldn’t even have killed myself if I didn’t have it! Anyway, I was stuck in that timeline the whole night and most of the next day before I got that photo in front of me again, because I couldn’t just get up and look for it myself. And, I found out mom and dad were working overtime trying to keep up with my medical bills, and that night I overheard the doctor telling them my lungs were getting worse and I had only a few months to live. Worst of all, in this timeline Max blew me off to party with the Vortex Club and I never even met Rachel—“

From the group’s reactions, the older Chloe could tell that the older Max had seen something very similar, perhaps the same – but Rachel and the triplets looked at each other, then back to older Chloe, with uniformly horrified expressions. Young Max piped up next to the older Chloe. “I couldn’t believe it when she told me I joined the Vortex Club in that timeline. I guess anything can happen with time travel!”

“Anything except the one thing you really want,” older Chloe sighed. “I guess I should be glad I at least got to tell dad I loved him one more time while he held the photo in front of me. I told him I’d heard him and mom arguing about money and that I’d heard what the doctor said the night before when they thought I was asleep. I gave him permission to let me go. And then I escaped into the photo… it wasn’t until earlier today, when I died and met this Max, and now all of you… Oh god, I fucked up so hard. I think we both did… I think we’ve been leaving behind copies of ourselves with every change we make.”

“Yeah, I figured that out when I ran into these three,” the older Max said, “but you’re really cute when there’s three of you together.” The younger Chloe-triplets snuggled into Max appreciatively, and the older Chloe had to agree with her fellow time-traveler.

“I left my family ruined, all because I couldn’t let go of dad.” Older Chloe sighed. “Sadly, I fucked up a whole lot more before I learned to Stop. Fucking. With. Time. When I got back to that picture from the day of dad’s accident, I hugged him, and told him I loved him, and then I confronted Max about the fact that she was about to leave me in two weeks. You,” older Chloe looked right at older Max, “probably know or can guess what happened.”

Older Max did know. “Of course I tried going back five years and making my younger self call you from Seattle and give you my new address. In my version, that timeline caused you and Rachel to drive up to Seattle to visit me and help me move back for Blackwell. You guys got hit by a drunk driver, Rachel ended up in a wheelchair and you… the doctors called it a persistent vegetative state. The only thing worse than death. Sorry, Rachel,” Max added upon noticing Rachel’s horrified reaction next to her, “At least the alternate me stayed friends with you though, but we lost Chloe and I’m not sure how long she’ll be in that coma before we see her down here…” 

“I guess I’m still ahead in the wheelchair derby,” older Chloe said wryly. “Well, in my version, I got Max to keep in touch from Seattle and she was the one who ended up in the wheelchair after trying to come down to visit me for Christmas. It ended up just like what happened to me after saving dad, and Max never got to come to Blackwell, and Rachel, well, in that timeline we were friends until I found out about Frank. Once I knew what it was like being quadriplegic, I couldn’t leave Max like that. That was when I knew, the universe just wanted me to suffer those five years. I realized maybe I was being greedy and I should just be glad to have Max back at all. Obviously when I got back to ‘my’ timeline the first thing I did was apologize to that Max and forgive her for, well, that. And after learning about Rachel and Frank from the other timeline, of course I had to use my powers to check it out in my timeline. We didn’t get around to that until Wednesday though because it turns out Kate Marsh jumped off the roof on Tuesday and Max was kicking herself for missing the signs. I jumped into a photo she took with my autopilot-self that morning and warned her what was going to happen. 

“So the next day, as this Max probably knows, me and my Max went to Frank’s RV…”

“Aren’t you skipping something?” older Max interrupted, clarifying with a wink upon seeing older Chloe’s confusion.

“Huh?” Older Chloe was confused for moment but then it clicked – older Max saw the exact moment when her cheeks went a bit pink. “Yes, of course I dared you to kiss me, and good thing for my ego I didn’t have to rewind and try again. We made out for a while but that was it.” Older Max arched an eyebrow. “What, did we get further in your version?”

It was older Max’s turn to be slightly embarrassed. “No!” she answered quickly, “I just thought that – well – when I had the powers, you dared me to kiss you, and I wanted to, but I hesitated the first time. Then you accused me of already doing it and rewinding, which was hilarious because that’s exactly what I’d been tempted to do. So then I went back, kissed you and you were surprised. Then all the hellish stuff happened and we didn’t get any further until the storm came. I just thought… if you’d had powers, you would’ve…done more?”

“I wanted to,” older Chloe said, “of course I wanted to, I might have with anyone else, but I couldn’t do that to you, Max. Even if you wouldn’t remember, I didn’t want to make you uncomfortable by going too fast.”

“Sorry, I just had to know. Anyway, go on. You were in Frank’s RV…”

“Right. Wednesday morning we stole Frank’s keys and got into his RV. I flipped out when I found Rachel’s photo and letters—it’s okay Rachel, I’m over it now—but I was so mad then, I got in a fight with Frank and even ended up shooting him the first time we went to confront him, I had to rewind like five times to get myself under control enough and get him on our side. Well, he didn’t know any more than we did. He had no idea who this person that changed her life might have been. Without my time powers, it’d have been another dead end.

“But, I found my last photo with Rachel before she disappeared and jumped back. I told her I was from the future, that I’d forget this conversation afterwards, and that something bad was going to happen to her on April 22, 2013, I didn’t know what. I also told her about Prescott being a creep who drugged me and at least one other student in the future.

Older Chloe turned to Rachel. “I actually saved you, Rachel. A different you, I guess. When I woke up from the photojump, we’d actually made it to Los Angeles… but things were horrible. We were about to get evicted from our shitty little apartment because we were behind on rent, you got backstabbed by the guy you thought would be your big break after you seduced him… everything’s so expensive down there. And the worst thing was, Max got killed in a hit-and-run after starting at Blackwell! According to the texts from my mom, someone had seen Nathan Prescott’s truck leaving the scene, but they got him to change his story of course and that was the end of it. Oh, yeah, and it turned out he was the one who tried to drug you back in April. So… yeah, I see Max told you that already…

“Well, I figured I’d try again. I went back to the month before Rachel disappeared and warned her about Nathan again, this time I knew who it was, but this time I also wrote myself a note to wait for Max in Arcadia Bay and protect her from whatever would happen. I told Rachel to go on to Los Angeles first and I’d meet her with Max later. And I warned Rachel to avoid that guy in L.A. She was pissed, but I managed to get her to believe me after a couple rewinds.

“So by this point, it was Thursday afternoon when I got back to my time, I checked my journal and texts and I thought I’d finally fixed things… until Max didn’t show up for dinner or answer her phone.” Suddenly the whole room was thick with tension, letting older Chloe know that everyone already knew exactly what was going to happen next. She sighed. “Yep. I had no idea until the next morning though, so all I could do was take a selfie and hope to come back from the future once I knew what to do. I drove all over town looking for Max and couldn’t find her. Well, that night David and his cop buddies found the Prescott bunker. Max called me from the hospital after they got her out, said Jefferson ambushed the cops as they entered, killed David and hurt Officer Berry before they took him down. I went to see her at the hospital right away. When I saw how badly Jeffershit got to her I knew I couldn’t just go back to last night. We got out her diary and found a photo from Monday so I could go back, used Max’s phone to anonymously warn David about Jefferson before he got Max.

“So I was back to Friday morning again and I woke up sitting with Max in the old lighthouse with a howling storm outside. Max told me our plan worked and we were up at the lighthouse watching the sunrise, and just when we were going to go drop her off at school, the storm picked up and we ended up breaking into the lighthouse for shelter. I looked outside and there was the tornado heading for the town, like in my dream.

“We started going through Max’s photos again to figure out how I was going to jump back to make us warn people about the storm… and then… Mom called from the diner, said the tornado was coming for them and everyone was trapped inside by the wreckage. She told me to get somewhere safe and call David. I told her I was at the lighthouse with Max and she asked me to put her on speaker… We had a few minutes to say goodbye and that was it. I was going to fix it all in a moment but I still almost cried when David called from Blackhell and actually said ‘I love you’ for the first time, right before the line went dead… someday you’ll understand, Mini-Me. He really did care about us, even after everything we did to piss him off.

“We tried every photo from that whole week. I’d jump back, tell Max to tell me about the storm and start getting people out of town. We managed to save most of Max’s friends but no matter what we did it seemed like something always happened to mom or David or Max… and even with Kate, Warren, Frank, and Victoria Chase all helping us, we could never get more than 700 people out of town before the storm came.”

“Four thousand and forty-seven,” older Max said while watching for her counterpart’s reaction. The older Chloe’s eyes went wide. “I let four thousand and forty-seven people die as long as none of them were people we knew.”

“That’s how many died for me, too,” older Chloe said. “That…can’t be a coincidence. No way.”

“I think you did what you were supposed to,” Rachel interjected. “I have a feeling. Keep going…”

“Well, the storm was just the beginning. We went to stay with Max’s parents for a bit since the whole town was wrecked. And the storm followed us to Seattle. I had to jump back again to warn Max. So we took that road trip to Portland instead, leaving your parents the day before they’d get hit. So they were fine, but there was a freak earthquake in Portland and the motel caved in on us overnight. I woke up to a big chunk of the roof falling right on Max and I realized, then, that all our hopes of not using my powers again were gone.

“After I saved Max again…”

When the older Chloe trailed off again, her fellow time-traveler knew exactly why without even being told.

“I asked you to sacrifice me, didn’t I,” older Max sighed.

Older Chloe nodded. “You’re such a better person than me, Max. At least you *tried* to sacrifice me for the town. I never even considered sacrificing you for a second, even when you wanted me to. I saved you from forty-five car crashes, twenty ‘random’ shootings…” older Chloe made scare quotes with her fingers to show that there was obviously no randomness to them, “…fifteen natural disasters, three lightning strikes, literally, two house fires, a subway accident, a guy blowing up a gas station by smoking… I even stopped a terrorist attack in Paris that would have killed you and fifty more people. Took me three days and twenty photo-jumps to solve the plot and give the Frenchies the right tips at the right time to bust those guys before they’d strike. You wanted to give up, after that, but I couldn’t let you. When you got pancreatic cancer the next year, I photo-jumped back six months to try to catch it early. Worst mistake I ever made, next to putting you in a wheelchair. When I got back from that jump you were wasting away in the hospital bed after months of surgeries and chemo. They cut out almost every organ possible but the cancer kept coming back and they cut more and more, you had a feeding tube and a million IV’s and you begged me to jump back and just let you die from the cancer because the treatment was so horrible. I went back and undid things, we had our last three months together after your diagnosis, and you drifted away in your sleep…”

Rachel held out a handkerchief which older Chloe gratefully accepted as she began to tear up and sniffle. Young Max held her for a few minutes until she was ready to continue.

“We went back to Arcadia Bay for your funeral. Your parents came down from Seattle and gave me the few things we hadn’t taken from your room when we left three years before. I only kept it together because I knew I wasn’t going to be around much longer. The day after it was over, I left my journal and a note for Mom on my bed and went to the lighthouse, planning to jump. The wind started blowing as I approached the end of the path… and out of nowhere, from one of the trees, a gust of wind blew something out of the branches and it flew right into me. I caught it and there it was, your blue butterfly photo from the bathroom… I knew the universe was telling me something because I threw that photo off the cliff a year before, when we got into an argument about you wanting to give up during a trip home to visit my mom and David. Warren somehow convinced you that using my powers to save you had caused the tornado. I told you I didn’t care and I’d cause a thousand more of them if that’s what it would take, and then I threw the photo into the ocean. For that photo to get stuck in a tree for a whole year, and then come back to me right then… It was pretty obvious what I was supposed to do, although it only really made sense when I found out about *your* powers just now. I jumped back three years to that Blackhell bathroom and got Nathan to shoot me instead of you.”

“Oh, Chloe.” Older Max’s voice was thick with emotion. “I’m so sorry you had to go through anything like what I have…”

“I’m not,” older Chloe stated. “God, or whoever it was talking to me in the light earlier today, he said if I was willing to go through hell for you, I might as well go *to* hell for you. He didn’t really give me a choice in the end, he was just teasing me, but it was true. After these last three years, even if I’d had the choice, to go to heaven and be with Dad again, and Mom and David… I’d still have chosen you. I mean, if he’d asked me during those five years without you maybe not, but the moment you came back… I never stopped loving you, even though I tried to bury it all… I love you Max, in every timeline, in every dimension… forever.”

Older Max’s heart melted all over again, and so did the younger Chloe-triplets, who went “Aww” in unison as they snuggled into her from all sides. Rachel snatched her handkerchief back from older Chloe and dabbed at her eyes. “Aww, that’s so romantic! You’re killing me all over again.” Young Max said nothing, just leaned her head on older Chloe’s shoulder as she hugged her and smiled dreamily. “You, too,” older Chloe said softly, turning to young Max.

Older Chloe stroked her fingers through younger Max’s hair as she finished her telling. “I woke up in the same bathroom where I’d just died and this Max was on the floor with me,” older Chloe indicated the younger Max in her arms, “except she had no memory of the last three years I’d spent with her. That was when I realized she must have been left behind when I used my powers that very first time, that whenever I saved you I’d also killed a copy of you… I told her my story and we decided to explore and see how much was still the same as we remembered. We walked over to where the Two Whales should have been and, well, you were there.”

Something was still nagging at the back of Rachel’s mind, however touching the scene before her was. “Chloe, I hate to ask, but I have to know… what happened to the me who went to L.A. when you were waiting for Max?”

Older Chloe sighed wistfully. “We got to visit you once, during those three years. Max and I were afraid to stay too long with the universe still trying to kill her. Turns out you got a nice modeling gig for a while, but that guy I warned you about, he still got you blacklisted after you wouldn’t sleep with him. You switched to acting instead, had a few minor parts in a bunch of movies, last I heard.”

“Huh, I guess I’m alive at least,” Rachel said, though she seemed slightly disappointed.

“Oh, I’m sure you’ll be a star in a few years,” older Chloe reassured her. “You were still sleeping your way up the ranks in Hollywood. You’d turned down one offer for a lead role, which was good because it flopped anyways. Sometimes you gotta wait for the right opportunity.”

There was a knock on the door. “That’s probably my mom,” Rachel said as she rose to answer the door. The two Maxes did not recognize the older brown-haired woman who entered carrying a cloth bag, though her facial resemblance to Rachel was obvious. All four Chloes did recognize her, however, and she recognized them, halting in shock as she did.

“Mom, you remember my best friend Chloe,” said Rachel, as she took her mother’s bag and set it on the table, “and this is Chloe’s best friend Max Caulfield.” Rachel pulled her mother into the shack and closed the door behind her as she continued to stare wordlessly from one duplicate Chloe to the next. “Max,” Rachel continued without missing a beat, “my mother, Sera Gearhardt.”

“Nice to meet you, Sera.” Both Maxes spoke and waved in unison. Sera’s expression remained shocked but she began to smile a bit in amusement.

“You as well, Max… and Max.” Sera said a bit uncertainly, addressing one Max, then the other. She turned to her daughter. “What happened?”

“They all died and showed up here a couple hours ago,” Rachel said. “We were just talking about it. Two of them turned into time travelers… Did you guys do that?”

Sera’s worried expression gave her answer away before she said it. “That has to be it. We voted this morning to go ahead with it, but this isn’t what we thought…” She gestured to the duplicates of her daughter’s friends occupying the room. “We need to tell the council about this right now!”

Rachel suddenly remembered Max and Chloe had no idea what they were talking about and looked over to see, indeed, all of her friends giving her a confused look.

“My mom is part Indian,” Rachel explained. “The Tillamook Indians have lived in this area for hundreds of years and since they’ve never been Christians, they all come here whenever they die. My mom’s dad was Tillamook, but she never knew him on Earth, she was inducted into the tribe after arriving here. Right now the Prescotts are bulldozing Tillamook graves to build Pan Estates and everyone’s super mad about it. Mom says they’ve tried everything, lawsuits, protests, spirit animals, even sending scary visions to Sean Prescott, but he won’t back down. And we haven’t been able to take him down using methods that wouldn’t cause collateral damage. They’ve gotten so fed up with losing to the Prescotts, they’ve been talking about wiping the entire town just to get back at Sean. Today they had a meeting of the whole tribe to decide whether they were going to do it. I didn’t think they would, so I left early to catch Chloe at the time she was supposed to die… when I saw three of her I had a feeling they’d done something. But I didn’t know the exact plan. Mom does, she was there.”

Max and Chloe all looked at each other as the realization dawned on their faces.

_“We were supposed to let the storm happen!?”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those keeping track at home...
> 
> \- It's now the evening of October 7, 2013
> 
> \- The "hard reset" caused by the Indian tribe giving Max her powers forks the timeline, creating one of the Young Chloe triplets who dies in the timeline that the Indians never did the "hard reset" on
> 
> \- The timeline where Max gains powers (becoming "Real Max") forks upon Max's first use of those powers, leaving behind the second Young Chloe triplet
> 
> \- The future "Real Max" from Oct 11 has also just jumped back to Oct 7 for the purpose of sacrificing Chloe, thereby creating and killing the third of the Young Chloe triplets
> 
> \- "Real Max" later regrets that, returns from Oct 19 to Oct 7 to save Chloe again, and creates a whole tree of timelines in the next 3 years, jumping from timelines where Chloe died sooner into timelines where Chloe's death is delayed
> 
> \- After running out of workable timelines, "Real Max" sacrifices herself, creating one last timeline where Chloe inherits her powers, and hijacking/killing one younger version of herself in the process
> 
> \- "Real Chloe" then uses those powers to leave the timeline where Max died and create another timeline where she prevents Max's sacrifice. This turns into a whole tree of timelines mirroring the ones "Real Max" created during these same 3 years
> 
> \- "Real Chloe" then sacrifices herself, which creates and hijacks a fourth copy of her younger self; this fourth Young Chloe doesn't remember actually leaving her truck to meet Nathan at all, instead like Young Max she blacks out right at the moment Max took the photo (while Chloe was still in her truck having just parked in the handicapped spaces).
> 
> \- Total Maxes dead so far = 2 (we've met both)  
> \- Total Chloes dead so far = 5 (we have only met 4 of them, the hijacked young Chloe will show up next chapter... along with the Tuesday Chloes)
> 
> Next chapter: Tuesday, Oct 8


	4. The Maxes Left Behind, part 1: The Eighth of October

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The events of Tuesday, October 8, across the multiverses.

Monday, October 7 – evening

The different versions of Max and Chloe watched as Sera pulled a pot out of her bag on the table and opened it to reveal a bean stew with several cobs of grilled corn sticking out halfway. “Rachel and I need to talk to the chiefs about you,” Sera told the group. “They’re going to want to see you as soon as possible, probably tomorrow morning, if that’s alright? Help yourselves to dinner.”

“When are you coming back?” the older Chloe asked them.

“It’s about a two hour walk from here to the main camp,” Rachel said. “I’ll be back pretty late. Mom might stay up there for the night and have me bring you tomorrow. You guys can take the bed if you get tired.”

“Didn’t you say you had to work tomorrow?” Younger Max asked, the only one among them who had any recent memory of being a conscientious student working towards some hopeful future.

“I’ll take a sick day,” Rachel replied, following her mother out the door. Pulling it closed, she turned to the north and for the third time that day…

_How many more of you are there, Chloe?_

A solitary, dejected-looking young Chloe about fifty feet down the street spotted Rachel and broke into a sprint towards her, excitedly calling her name. Rachel took a few quick steps forward, letting Chloe fly into her arms all over again.

“Welcome to hell, Chloe.” 

“What happened to you, Rachel? I’ve been looking for you for six months!”

Those words confirmed Rachel’s suspicions, after what she’d just learned about the older Max and Chloe’s time traveling abilities.

“Chloe, let me guess. You blacked out waiting to meet Nathan and don’t remember anything.”

“How did you know!?”

Rachel grabbed this Chloe by the wrist and pulled her along, back towards her cottage. “I’ll let these two explain it to you.”

Rachel pushed open her front door and dragged the new Chloe into her home as the other Chloes and Maxes stared. “Chloe,” Rachel said to the oldest time-traveling Chloe, “here’s your younger self who doesn’t remember meeting Nathan. Why don’t you guys fill her in while mom and I go see the chiefs.” Rachel quickly spun around and exited before anyone else had recovered enough to say anything.

Waiting outside, Sera raised an eyebrow as her daughter re-emerged onto the street. “Rachel, dear… how will they all fit on your bed?” 

“…oh.” 

“The tribe has lodgings prepared for up to eight,” Sera revealed. “We were expecting at most two of your friend Chloe today and maybe four or five more over the rest of the week, and since her being cloned is our fault, we planned to be responsible for her until she could get acclimated. But, anyway, the tribe can still accommodate them better than you can. Let’s bring them along and have them stay the night.”

“Good point.”

It was times like this that Rachel wished there were cars in hell, or at least some horse-drawn carriages. The tribal lands north and east of town, that would have been only a few minutes’ drive away back on Earth, were instead an epic two-hour journey on foot from Rachel’s residence near the central part of town.

Since it would be a long walk, Sera insisted that everyone eat something before going. The feast she’d brought for two was quickly eaten up by eight young women, Sera giving up her share to the three girls who’d missed out on Rachel’s treat at the diner earlier that afternoon. (“I can always get more of it up north,” she’d reassured the older Chloe and younger Max when they hesitated.)

About half an hour later, the odd-looking group of five Chloes, two Maxes, and one Rachel could be seen following Sera up the main road of Arcadia Bay, chattering animatedly. Night had fallen in hell, and the town was dark, the only light coming from the ethereal glow of distant flames over the horizon that surrounded them on all sides.

* * *

Tuesday, October 8 - morning

Thanks to the wonders of time travel, the “real” Max was literally in two different places at once.

She was 21 years old, newly deceased, nervously preparing to face the thousands more who would soon die (or had died three years ago, from her perspective) as a result of the time travel powers she’d finally given up less than 24 hours ago.

But she was also 18 years old, very much alive, sitting in a small-town diner back on Earth with the best friend she’d just saved using the time travel powers she’d suddenly acquired less than 24 hours ago.

And 18-year-old “Real Max” was about to split the universe, yet again, in the process of showing her newfound powers to Chloe.

“I want proof you can rewind time!” Chloe enthusiastically prompted.

“I can tell you every single thing you have in your pockets,” Max proposed.

“Okay Max, impress me!”

Of course, since she hadn’t yet used her rewind, Max was bound to answer wrong the first time.

“Okay, Psychic Girl, let me show you what's actually in my pockets.” Chloe emptied her pockets onto the table: a robot panda keychain, her cigarettes, some loose change, a parking ticket. “That was beyond epic fail. You even made me want to believe you...”

Max held up her hand and concentrated, and the timeline ripped apart at her fingertips, splitting all around them. One timeline backed up at Max’s command, leaving Max ready to show off her new knowledge of all that Chloe carried in her pockets.

In the other timeline…

“So… now what?” Chloe prompted.

Max strained, holding her hand out, but she could feel it. Her powers had vanished, just as suddenly as they’d appeared.

“Crap! It’s gone!”

“Uh huh.” Chloe’s expression was so unimpressed, it was impressively unimpressed. Max knew there was no further point in trying to convince her of her powers.

Three days later Max and Chloe were huddled together in Max’s dorm room at Blackwell as the storm swirled. “Sorry I didn’t believe you about the tornado,” Chloe said. “I wouldn’t have if I were you,” Max reassured her.

Suddenly there was a massive creaking above them as the roof ripped away, Max’s belongings almost instantly leaping off the floor and flying away into the vortex. Distant screams could be heard from elsewhere in the dorm over the crashes of debris and roar of the storm. Max’s bed rose into the air, flipping over as it did, Chloe and Max barely having time to grab each other as they were dumped out of the bed right into the air – and yet found themselves incredibly floating higher, out of the remnants of Max’s room, instead of falling back to the floor.

“This was the best week of my life,” Chloe cried into Max’s hair as they held on to each other, freezing in their pajamas as the storm had stripped away Max’s blankets. “Thank you, for coming back!”

“I’m sorry I made you wait so long!” Max cried on Chloe’s shoulder.

As the air became thin around them and breathing became a struggle, they finally kissed for the first time, and then the last time.

* * *

Back on Tuesday, a few minutes later in the initial (“original”) timeline…

“I will predict the future.”

Max had already told Chloe exactly what was in her pockets, but Chloe wanted just a little more proof. So, together with Chloe, Max watched as a trucker broke his coffee mug, a police officer got left behind by his partner, Trevor and Justin started fighting, and a jukebox started going crazy. And now, armed with more than enough proof for Chloe, Max raised her hand to rewind.

“Well?”

But in this branch off the “main” timeline, the Max who had just now rewinded to tell Chloe what was in her pockets, suddenly could rewind no more. Cheeks flaming in embarrassment, she could only confess the unbelievable truth.

Chloe stormed out, convinced that Max was either pulling an elaborate hoax to win her back, or else refusing to lend her powers when they were really needed (particularly to help find Rachel). It wasn’t until the next morning, after word had spread about Kate Marsh jumping from the Blackwell dorm roof the previous afternoon, that Chloe finally believed Max was telling her the whole truth. Three days later, Chloe would unsuccessfully attempt to shield Max in her bed as the Blackwell dorm roof collapsed under the relentless impact of massive whale corpses and thrown automobiles falling like mortar shells. There would be no last kiss for them, as the darkness came suddenly.

* * *

The other branch of that same timeline, in which Max did succeed in rewinding both times in the diner and convincing Chloe of her powers beyond all doubt, would split again less than an hour later in the junkyard…

“Jesus, I shot myself! I shot myself! Back up, back up!”

“Stupid gun! Hold on, Chloe!”

In another timeline, the “real Max”’s timeline, Max would tell Chloe to shoot the tire instead of the bumper.

But in this timeline, Chloe had shot the bumper and the bumper had returned fire. And no matter how desperately Max focused, time kept going, and Chloe kept writhing in pain on the ground, blood beginning to seep through her fingers and expand in a spot across her shirt.

“Max?!” Chloe’s panic rose in response to seeing the panic on Max’s face.

“It’s not working! Please, no…” Max kneeled down next to Chloe, pulling out her phone to dial 911 with one hand as she helped Chloe keep pressure on the wound with her other hand.

“Hurts…breathing…” Chloe wheezed. Her breaths were shallow.

“Stay with me!” Max pleaded. “I can’t lose you!”

Chloe was still moaning in pain when the distant sound of sirens began to grow steadily louder. Within a few minutes, two paramedics shooed Max aside and lifted Chloe onto a stretcher.

Half an hour later Chloe was in the operating room at Arcadia Bay Medical Center with Max left behind outside the door, praying as she’d never done before. That was how David and Joyce found her a few minutes later, both having left work to attend to this family emergency. They prayed together for the next four hours. A nurse in blue scrubs finally emerged to inform them that surgery had gone well and Chloe was expected to survive, though with a shattered sternum and broken rib that would take months to heal.

In classic small-town fashion, Arcadia Bay came together in an amazing, overwhelming show of support that made Chloe tearfully regret her earlier wish to “turn Arcadia Bay into f**king glass”. Trevor and Justin came by with their skateboards later that evening and brought cards for Chloe. A few of the police officers who were friendly with David (all of whom were also Joyce’s regular customers) came to offer well wishes; each and every one of them had also arrested or ticketed Chloe at least once during the last few years, but they all expressed their optimism that Chloe’s troublemaking days might finally be over, with her having learned a rather painful lesson and with Max at her side promising to keep her out of further trouble. The following day Frank showed up, having gotten past the front desk by claiming to be a long-lost cousin (which made Chloe snort in laughter despite or perhaps because she knew it wasn’t her that he cared for), and oh-so-generously extended Chloe’s debt by two whole weeks, on top of the six months he’d already waited. Chloe sarcastically thanked him for his kindness, while Max flushed red under Frank’s equally sarcastic compliments to Chloe about her “pretty new girlfriend!” Steph and Mikey visited a few hours later, apologizing for being delayed by “grown-up stuff”, and told Max some of the stories she’d missed out on during her five years away from Chloe.

David, Joyce, and Max, in some combination, stayed with Chloe almost continuously for the next few days. Flowers and donations for the Price family streamed in that week, as cards and balloons accumulated, most coming from Joyce’s regular customers but a surprising few of them from Blackwell. On the days Joyce had to return to work at Two Whales, every other table was greeting her with wishes and prayers for her daughter’s recovery and hopeful reformation. Then, out of a clear sky that Friday morning, Arcadia Bay Medical Center was swept off its foundations in a massive tornado along with the rest of the town. As the roof ripped away and Chloe’s hospital bed lifted off along with everything else into the suctioning winds, Max and Chloe clung to each other and faced the void as they’d once imagined in their childhood adventures – only this time, for real.

* * *

In the “main” timeline, only an hour after splitting off from the above branch-timeline where Chloe was hospitalized with a ricochet gunshot wound…

“Help! I’m stuck!”

“Hold on, Chloe!” 

In just the last two hours Max had rewound twice to prove her powers to Chloe and once more to save Chloe from yet another accidental bullet wound. But now Chloe’s foot was well and truly stuck, and at that moment the horn of an approaching train blared in the distance.

Max ran to what looked like the control box for the rails. Opening the box revealed three wires which Max had no idea what to do with. She instead tried pulling on the neighboring lever to move the rails. But it refused to budge.

On the hill behind Max stood the operator’s booth and she tried that next. The door wouldn’t budge.

Desperately looking around outside the booth for something, anything she could use, Max spied the crowbar and seized it – but the horn of the train sounded again much louder now, and the screech of brakes told her that time was running out.

Crowbar in hand, Max ran back to Chloe, glancing over at the train rushing towards them in the distance. She tried to pry the rails apart to free Chloe’s foot, pulling back with her whole weight. But the rails were stronger than she was, even with Chloe helping.

The train’s screeching grew steadily louder as Max threw out her hand to rewind…

…and as one Max (the “real” Max) pushed the train backwards along with time, the other Max panicked as she realized that she couldn’t feel anything, that nothing was changing and the train was still coming.

_NO!_

Chloe could see Max concentrating, straining, trying to rewind, and as the panic set in on Max’s face, Chloe mirrored it.

“Max!?”

“No… please, no… not now!” Max sobbed.

In one last desperate attempt, Max stuck the crowbar between the rails, Chloe grabbed on, and both of them pushed with more adrenaline-boosted strength than they’d ever had before – so much that the crowbar itself gave way. The rails, unfortunately, did not, and never slackened their death grip on Chloe’s foot.

Chloe cursed herself for thinking anything good in her life could last. Of course Max’s powers would choose this moment to desert her – just when she finally, truly, wanted to live once again.

Suddenly Max’s expression transformed, the panic swept off her face, replaced by pure determination. Chloe watched in confusion, then awe and horror, as Max stood up, right in the middle of the tracks, and held her hand out as if to block the train, to push it back physically.

“I’m not leaving you, Chloe. Never again.”

Max was hoping that her powers would be brought back by a life-or-death situation. But she absolutely refused to lose Chloe again after only just getting her back. She decided, in that moment, that if the universe wanted Chloe dead, it would have to go through her first.

The speeding train rose to the challenge. For a brief moment Max felt her entire body jarred as it was thrown back by the impact of the train and then all was dark.

* * *

Meanwhile, the main timeline continued on with the Max who did succeed in rewinding to buy more time before the train’s arrival. With those precious extra minutes, Max was able to force open the door to the railroad operator’s booth, find a pair of pliers with which to cut the wires in the control box, and run back down to the control box. With the train again screeching closer, Max cut a wire – the wrong one. The box shorted out.

And as Max again rewinded to try another wire, yet another timeline branched off in which time marched on and the wrong wire remained cut. Panicking at the inopportune loss of her power, Max desperately threw herself against the rail-switching lever, but the lever stood strong, bouncing her right off and knocking her to the ground. She could only watch in abject horror as Chloe disappeared under the front of the train and a massive shower of blood splashed out between the train wheels.

It was the train crew who dialed 911 after realizing, in their own slow-motion horror movie, that no amount of braking could stop their train fast enough to avoid running over the girl apparently trapped on the rails. Local police and paramedics found Max ten minutes later lying next to the broken rail switch in fetal position, babbling some nonsense about rewinding time.

This Max spent the next three days in the psychiatric ward at Arcadia Bay Medical Center staring into space, refusing to answer most questions, and intermittently holding up her right arm as if trying to focus on something. Hundreds of miles away, the Caulfields’ phone rang in Seattle as they sat down to dinner. Ryan watched Vanessa pick up the phone and then burst into tears shortly afterward. Plans for a romantic weekend getaway were scrapped, and new plans were made to visit their daughter in the hospital. 

Unfortunately, those plans too would soon be canceled, for by the time that weekend arrived, the hospital and indeed the entire town would no longer exist.

* * *

The result of all this hullabaloo on Earth, on the morning of Tuesday, October 8, was three new arrivals in Hell.

Max awoke to find herself spread-eagled in the dirt, feeling oddly more comfortable and at peace than she could recall feeling in a long time. She started to sit up and look for Chloe when she realized someone’s hand was in hers. Turning her head in a flash, nearly straining her neck, she came face-to-face with Chloe, right beside her.

Both of them reached out and embraced in their reunion.

“Did that just happen?”

“That, or we’re both high…”

Chloe pulled back, giving Max a look of intense scrutiny. Max smiled sheepishly, having a good guess of what Chloe was about to ask her.

“Max, did you just…”

“Try to stop a train with my bare hands? …I guess I did.”

“What the hell were you thinking?” There was no judgment in Chloe’s voice; Max could tell she was genuinely puzzled by what had just occurred.

“Well… I, uh… I kinda hoped my powers would come back if it was really a life-or-death situation?”

Chloe gave Max a look, knowing there was more.

“And, uh…” Max felt her cheeks heat up with embarrassment. “I couldn’t just let you die, Chloe. Why did I get those powers, if not to save you?”

“So, either I just died twice somehow and took Max with me once…”

Max whipped around at the sound of Chloe’s voice suddenly coming from off to her left instead of right in front of her. Chloe mirrored her, equally shocked to hear a voice coming from her right.

“…or I’m really, really, high.”

Max and Chloe both stared dumbly at the duplicate Chloe who they hadn’t noticed sitting behind them until just now.

“You’re… me.”

“Obviously.”

“What the hell’s going on?”

Max felt the corners of her lips creeping into a smile as she watched Chloe talk to herself more literally than she’d ever thought possible. 

“So… I think we got run over by a train?”

“And Max just tried to stop the train with her bare hands?”

That was when the Chloe who hadn’t been holding Max’s hand seemed to have a sudden revelation.

“Wait. That’s not right.” The other two looked at her, questioning. “Max pulled a teleport with her rewind shit and one second she was next to me and next second she was at the rail switch with a crowbar and pliers… she did something and some sparks flew and then I saw her going like this trying to rewind or something,” Chloe demonstrated Max’s gesture, “and I guess it wasn’t working or something and the train just blacked me out, I didn’t even feel anything. And then some weird ball of light God lectured me like step-douche and then I woke up right here and heard you two talking behind me…”

“But I never did any of that,” Max said, puzzled. “I ran to the booth, but the door was locked, but I found a crowbar nearby and tried to get Chloe’s… your? …foot out of the rails, but the rails were too strong… and stupid rewind quit working right when I needed it.”

And finally, it clicked for Chloe.

“Alternate timelines! Maybe I’m from the timeline where you did rewind, which is why I saw you – or my Max, that is – jump over to the rail switch, but your timeline is the one where you couldn’t rewind, so you…” Chloe couldn’t help the disbelief creeping into her voice, “…tried to stop the train yourself instead? …This makes no sense right now…”

“She died trying to save our dumb asses,” said the Chloe who was entwined with Max. “After saving us literally yesterday… and this morning, this is so fucked up…”

“That was so badass with Frank, by the way,” the other Chloe said to Max. “Too bad we didn’t live long enough to pay him back…”

“Oh my God, we are so dumb,” Chloe said to Chloe. “Lying down on the train tracks? I mean…” She turned to Max. “Why did you do that?”

“I…” Max started, unsurely, only to be interrupted by a voice coming from above and to her left.

“It’s because she loves you, okay? Hi Max, I’m Rachel, nice to meet you.” Startled, the three girls on the ground turned to find _the_ Rachel Amber looming over them as she walked up to them from the side.

Rachel smiled, enjoying their surprise and eagerly anticipating what she guessed (correctly) would come next. Half a second later both Chloes were leaping up, one of them needing an extra second to disentangle herself from Max. The unattached Chloe smoothly sprang up from her seat on the ground right into Rachel’s arms, almost making her stagger backwards with the force of her embrace. The other Chloe paused, reaching down to help Max up, and soon got her hug from Rachel as well. 

Max looked at Rachel uncertainly over her Chloe’s shoulder, but Rachel would have none of it. She released Chloe and stepped over to Max, giving her a hug as well. After a moment, Max awkwardly returned it.

“Chloe loves you just as much,” Rachel reassured Max, quietly speaking into her ear. “I could never replace you.”

Rachel pulled back and spoke to all of them, putting on a cheesy, obviously-fake smile and miming a tour guide. “Welcome to hell, everyone! My name’s Rachel and I’ll be your tour guide for today! Come along and I’ll explain everything as we go.”

“Wait, what do you mean she loves us?” Chloe asked, still processing the enormity of what Rachel had said earlier as if it was no big deal.

Rachel turned with an incredulous look to the Chloe who’d spoken. “She stood between you and a speeding train, Chloe. How much more obvious do you want her to be?”

Both Chloes looked to Max for confirmation. Max shrugged sheepishly, but nodded, seemingly unsure what to say.

* * *

Meanwhile, several miles to the north, the three-years-older Max and Chloe from the future answered questions from a panel of grizzled tribal chiefs who had promised to provide housing and a new life for every future version of them, as well as other Arcadia Bay residents who would die over the course of their time-traveling escapades. The problem, of course, was that the number of Arcadia Bay arrivals was going to be about forty times more than previously anticipated.

“One hundred and sixty thousand people arriving this Friday?” One of the Tillamook chiefs asked.

“At least. Probably a few thousand more,” Max said. “I’m sorry I caused you all this trouble…”

“I’m sorry for any part I added to that,” Chloe added.

“It is no fault of yours,” the chief reassured them. “It is we who undertook this risky venture and we who must be responsible for all that follows from it. You utilized our gift with the best of intentions, more nobly than we had anticipated.”

“What, then, shall we do for these people?” another chief asked. “How is our harvest this year?”

The Tillamook tribe in hell was far larger than it had ever been on Earth, consisting of not just those members alive at any given time but every member who had ever lived – about 17,000 spirits in all. The town of Arcadia Bay to the south was home to the souls of about 7,000 American settlers, ranging from the first frontier settlers off the Oregon Trail to the most recently deceased Baby Boomers. Over the last few months, the Tillamook had expanded their farm fields and rationed their food stores in anticipation of up to 5,000 new American arrivals in case the town was to be destroyed. They were hoping once the construction and pollution stopped, the farm yields would grow and the tribesmen would be able to sleep uninterrupted by the noise. The tribe had been coordinating with the Arcadian town council to ensure adequate spare housing and facilities as well, and with preparations sufficiently far along by the previous week, they’d decided it was time to restore the balance of nature.

“The harvest appears well, more than what was needed by our original plan, but we shall not know exactly before this Friday,” was the answer from a man who appeared to be in charge of the numbers.

“So at a cautious estimate we will have six times as many people as we can feed with this year’s harvest.”

“Yes, more or less.”

* * *

Miles to the south, the twin Chloes and lone Max followed Rachel as they exited what turned out to be a small open field in an otherwise crowded junkyard – scarcely recognizable as the American Rust they’d known back on Earth, filled with more trash than metal scrap. Up ahead, several men could be seen shoveling trash into a large fire pit dug into the ground as a few others appeared to forge various metal implements. A few of the men waved and Rachel waved back.

“Our junkyard is a forge now,” Rachel explained. “It’s our dumpster, we burn trash from the town to make all the tools for farming and stuff.”

The path Rachel was leading the group along corresponded roughly to where the railroad was back on Earth, but here there were no train tracks, only dirt and autumn leaves.

* * *

Meanwhile, back on Earth…

A younger version of the “Real Max” was at that very moment screaming for Kate as she fell from the Blackwell rooftop. Thrusting out her hand, she forced herself to rewind, through her headache and her nose bleeding…

…and in the process left behind another world in which Max stood, staring at her outstretched right hand in shock and devastation as time flowed onward around her despite all her efforts to stop it. So many chances over the last day, so many times she’d taken back her choices, yet still she couldn’t save Kate when it really counted.

The rest of that day passed in a blur. Classes were canceled and Max spent the day moping in her room, interrupted only by a visit from a concerned Warren. Though Max had almost told him about her weird experience with time travel the day before, there seemed little point in bringing it up now that her powers had disappeared anyways and she wouldn’t be able to prove anything to him. But his reassurances that she couldn’t have known this would happen rang hollow in the face of her guilt over having used up all her rewinds on Chloe when she’d known Kate needed help.

Chloe texted later that afternoon, after the news had spread through the town, and she was the only one Max could possibly talk to about her powers failing earlier that day. So Max did just that, pouring everything out over the phone. On the other end Chloe cried with her, seized with guilt over having depleted Max’s rewind powers with her own reckless actions at the junkyard that morning.

When the eclipse happened right in front of Chloe, sitting at the beach, she almost didn’t notice until it was near totality. “Holy shit, there’s an eclipse!” Max rushed to her window at Chloe’s words and just caught the sun beginning to peek out again.

Even with Max’s powers gone and still no leads on Rachel, Chloe refused to give up. She had lost the faith of her childhood long ago but now found another in its place: now she believed that Max’s purpose all along had been to save her from Nathan and help her find (or avenge) Rachel. With Kate gone and no other hope of bringing Nathan to justice, Max agreed to Chloe’s next daring scheme: They would try to break into Principal Wells’ office on Sunday night when people were least likely to be around.

But the ominous signs continued – a double moon, dead birds, beached whales – and Max began to worry about the vision she’d had that Monday. She persuaded Chloe to be prepared for evacuation, just in case, and they shared their concern with Warren, who agreed to help with his car in case it became necessary.

As it turned out, the storm came that Friday, pre-empting Chloe’s plan of breaking into Blackwell that weekend. For once Chloe was grateful for David’s paranoia, as that had made it easy for Max to convince him to be prepared to flee at a moment’s notice, and Joyce had gone along for his sake.

Most of Arcadia Bay still ended up destroyed, but a significant portion of the Blackwell students and teachers had taken Max, Warren, or David seriously enough to not be completely unprepared. The students who hadn’t prepared lost most of their belongings, but in the end they’d managed to squeeze almost everyone into a car and get out with just minutes to spare as the tornado barreled through. The parts of the town closer to the shore hadn’t been so lucky. The townsfolk had mostly shrugged off the unusual weather phenomena and while they’d all stayed indoors due to the storm, the tornado came on so suddenly that even most of those who had basements were caught unaware. 

That same evening, in a hotel room in San Francisco, Mark Jefferson was doing the best work of his career, his only regret being that this brilliance had to stay forever a secret, unable to be appreciated by the world. In his camera’s viewfinder, 18-year-old Victoria Chase was peacefully passed out on his bed, hours after successfully representing a school that no longer existed in a national photography contest. Several hours later, Jefferson carried Victoria back to her own room, opening it with the key from her purse. Victoria woke up late Saturday morning to bright sunlight through the window and Jefferson pounding on her door to wake her up for their plane ride back to Portland. She could tell Jefferson hadn’t fallen for her charms at all and she was still in the same clothes as the day before, which left her puzzled as to why she was waking up so late after falling asleep so early – the last thing she remembered was sharing a drink with her mentor right after dinner. 

Victoria and Jefferson barely caught their flight back, meeting up with a few other Blackwell refugees staying in Portland that evening. Victoria never did figure out the mystery of that morning, and soon forgot about it in any case with the distraction of Arcadia Bay’s recent destruction and ongoing search and rescue efforts occupying everyone’s attention.

* * *

Meanwhile, back in hell, earlier on Tuesday afternoon… 

Rachel led the newly arrived Max and two new Chloes northward as the town gave way to farm fields and orchards and vineyards, dotted with occasional clusters of the Tillamooks’ wooden houses. At last, they arrived in a large clearing where several hundred were seated on the ground. Up ahead in the distance, a chief was addressing the crowd. And there at the front, unmistakably recognizable with her blue hair even at a distance, sat a row of five other Chloes together with two darker-haired figures that did resemble Max – and were in fact Max.

As Rachel brought her newest guests forward, the audience began to take notice and whispers broke out. Max and both Chloes kept marching forward though feeling a bit awkward. The chief who was speaking saw them approach.

“Welcome, Chloe Price and Max Caulfield,” the chief announced. “The people of Nekelim welcome you today as our guests. A lodging is prepared for you and your fellow selves. All will be explained shortly. Please sit and we shall attend to you shortly.”

The new Max and two new Chloes glanced at each other, then down at their alternate selves; then they sat, joined by Rachel. An hour later, after the meeting adjourned, they were approached by the chief who had welcomed them earlier. He introduced himself as Watatkum, the youngest of the Tillamook chiefs, shaking hands with the new Max and Chloes – the earlier arrivals having already met him that morning. He showed them to a small longhouse meant for eight dwellers, though since there were ten of them (eleven counting Rachel) he offered to allow some of them to stay with his family or any of the others with the nearest houses.

Naturally, all three Maxes and seven Chloes wanted to stay together for the night, and Rachel stayed with them. Sera went back to her own assigned dwelling, so as not to intrude.

Soon, the storm would be coming. None of them knew what tomorrow would bring. But for this night they were together at last, and all was well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And so conclude the Tuesday branches of Max’s timelines! What will Wednesday bring?
> 
> Max Tracker & Chloe Tracker:  
> -Total Maxes = 3 (Alpha Max, Monday Hijacked Max, and Tuesday Train Max #1 of 2)  
> -Total Chloes = 7 (Alpha Chloe, Monday Hijacked Chloe, Monday Triplets, and Tuesday Train Twins)
> 
> Chapter 5 sneak preview:
> 
> “I was eating those beans-are you fucking insane!? I WAS EATING – THOSE – BEANS!” 
> 
> Chuckling in amusement as the enraged Frank rose up at her, Max stuck out her hand to rewind… only to suddenly find her powers had vanished when she most needed them.
> 
> *Oh, shit.*


	5. Amber Alert: The Tip of the Iceberg of Destiny

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Before there was a Max with rewind powers, there was Rachel. All the timelines we see may be merely branches of one that was originally left behind...

Thursday, April 22, 2013 - late night 

As Rachel’s awareness slowly returned the first thing she noticed was the uncomfortably hard tile floor on which her entire left side was resting. Everything was dark, her hip and shoulder were sore from the prolonged pressure, her eyelids refused to open at her command.

Some kind of repetitive noise was sounding at intermittent intervals around her, sometimes nearer, then farther away. And then, suddenly, something clicked in the fog. _Clicks. They’re camera shutters._ Rachel suddenly recognized the sound. She forced her eyes open, only to quickly squeeze them shut again after being overwhelmed by the bright lights.

_What the hell is going on? ...Wait. Mr. Jefferson’s studio?_

“Mr. Jefferson?” Rachel murmured, opening her eyes more lazily to adjust to the lights. “I thought we were doing this tomorrow?”

That was when the camera came close-up to her face for a shot. In accordance with Mr. Jefferson’s preferences from the last time, Rachel looked ahead and past the camera rather than into the lens, only to realize with a start that it was not her teacher and secret lover taking the shots. Instead, Nathan Prescott was grinning proudly behind the bulky camera as he awkwardly wielded it, clearly excited to try out a few of the master’s techniques for the first time. 

The sight of Nathan jogged some of Rachel’s hazy memories. She’d agreed to another session with Mr. Jefferson on Friday evening, so that she could go to the Vortex Club party Thursday night, where she’d hung out with Nathan and some of the other boys, and then she’d gotten woozy at the party and blacked out, even though she wasn’t that buzzed--

Rachel bolted upright as she pieced together the last thing she remembered: Nathan bringing drinks for the group and handing one to her. Intending to jump up, she jerked to a stop in an awkward sitting position just as the camera flashed again, and just as she discovered her hands and feet were stuck together – bound.

This was not what Rachel had agreed to at all. Jefferson hadn’t told her anything about Nathan being involved with this part of his work. But even as Rachel’s anger rose up within her, the shutter clicked, Nathan having already started taking the photo and unable to react in time to Rachel’s sudden unexpected movement.

“Nathan, what the fuck!?”

Nathan panicked, nearly slamming his twenty-thousand-dollar camera on the ground in his haste to put it down. He ran for the metal supply cart, grabbed a syringe and dashed back across the room to stab it into Rachel’s neck even as she tried to lean away from him.

And at that very moment, as Rachel screamed “No!” in bewildered fear of this Nathan who was nothing like the Nathan she’d known from school, and as she felt the needle poke into her neck – time suddenly stopped.

A moment later Rachel watched everything she’d just seen reverse itself in a rapidly accelerating blur – and with another blink of her eyes she was standing in front of the mirror in her dorm room at Blackwell, all dressed out for a Vortex Club party.

Rachel blinked a few more times and then pulled out her phone. She looked back up to see her own slack-jawed expression in the mirror, wide hazel eyes staring back at her. It was 8:45pm, right before the party she’d already gone to, as if the last few hours had never happened.

As if on cue, there was a knock on the door and Sarah’s voice on the other side. “Hey Rach, you ready?”

“Um, just a minute!” Rachel called back, then thought better of it. “Actually, go on without me. I’ll find you inside!”

The phone vibrated again in Rachel’s hand – again – and she knew, even before she looked down, what it would show. But still, she forced herself to look, and then flopped back down onto her bed, breathing heavily. It was just as she remembered: a text from Chloe letting her know that she’d just successfully obtained the cash loan of $3000 from Frank to get the truck fixed. Operation Get-Out-Of-Bigfootsville was officially underway.

Everything was happening again. Nathan kidnapping her and using Mr. Jefferson’s Dark Room… hadn’t been a dream.

This Rachel – the newly-created “Main Rachel” – would soon proceed on her journey of discovery across the timelines, completely oblivious to the trail of devastation in her wake.

 

* * *

 

Tuesday, October 8, 2013 – underworld

Curled up on a cornhusk mattress in a brand new wooden longhouse, surrounded by Chloe on all sides, Max thought her first two days in hell had been surprisingly good, all things considered. She knew now that she’d fucked up far worse than she had ever imagined, and that within a few weeks she would have to face the vast multiplications of suffering she had caused. But she’d also discovered that she would have at least one version of Chloe by her side for all eternity, which made things more bearable; and she’d finally met Rachel, who turned out to be human after all.

In the other bed just a few feet away, the “original” Rachel (who did not yet know she was merely the one left behind) slept uneasily, dreaming of a massive storm over Arcadia Bay as it disintegrated before her eyes and seemed to vacuum itself up right at her face, passing right through her. She tasted sand and concrete and blood in her open mouth, yet somehow never touched or swallowed anything. The town passed below her as she hovered in mid-air, suspended by an invisible force. A vast field of houses reduced to rubble passed beneath her, interspersed with streets full of downed trees and overturned cars. With a start, Rachel recognized Frank’s RV, smashed against the side of the Two Whales.

Suddenly, the roof lifted off the diner, crinkling in the wind like tissue paper as it flew up into Rachel’s face. Rachel instinctively moved her arms to shield herself – and as she did, great chunks of streets and houses seemed to fly up into the air on either side of her. Rachel looked down again and suddenly she saw people flying up into her face – she recognized Frank and Joyce among several others as they flew past. “No!” she screamed, reaching out to try to catch them – but they flew away in tune with her motions and disappeared beyond her reach into the dense rain and clouds.

Trapped in the dream and unable to sense its unreality, Rachel cried, and in the midst of her sobs as she sucked in a breath she suddenly realized that waves of debris were coming up towards her, in time with her breathing…

Rachel bolted awake in the dark longhouse as she suddenly realized, in the dream, that she _was_ the tornado.

 

Tuesday, October 8, 2013 – aboveground

In another of Max’s left-behind timelines…

Sneaking out to meet Chloe later that night, Max unluckily found Principal Wells sitting on the steps, facing the only exit to the courtyard. There was no hope of evading him.

_Great, he saw me. Maybe I could sneak by when he was trying to open the door…_

And it was at this moment that this Max’s rewind powers deserted her, jumping into another timeline branch along with the “Real Max” who chose this moment to rewind to get past the Principal.

“Max, stop wandering outside and get back to your dorm,” said Principal Wells, annoyed.

But even without her powers, Max wouldn’t give up on Chloe. Pretending to return back the way she came, she instead stopped just out of sight of the Principal and quietly brought out her cellphone, typing out a text to Chloe, then thinking better of it and making a phone call instead, ducking into the darkness so she could watch the Principal in case he moved. Unfortunately, judging by the bottle of whiskey at his side, it didn’t look like Max would be able to wait him out.

“Max, where are you? I’m freezing out here!” Chloe complained.

“Chloe, sorry to keep you waiting. Wells was sitting right by the exit and my powers just fizzled. I can’t get past him!”

“What do you mean your powers fizzled?!”

“They’re gone. Like I was afraid of earlier today. I just tried to rewind to get past Wells and it’s just not there anymore. I’m sorry…”

“What the fuck! Just when we were finally going to find Rachel… Are you sure you can’t do it anymore?”

“Chloe, I just pulled a muscle straining myself trying to rewind. I wouldn’t just make this up!”

“Ughhh! And I even went to the trouble of getting you the spare keys so we can finally see what Wells is hiding!” Frustrated sigh. “I guess I’m on my own. Again.” The hurt and disappointment in Chloe’s voice was far out of proportion to this one setback and made Max desperate to do something to make up for far more than just this misfortune.

“No, Chloe, wait! I’ll…” Max hesitated, she couldn’t promise to sneak out to join Chloe if she couldn’t find a way past Principal Wells. “I’ll call you if Wells leaves so you can get out of there before he shows up?”

“Sounds like a plan! Cover me, I’m going in!”

Knowing she was now powerless to rewind and save Chloe if anything went wrong, Max hid in the shadows, watching Wells, on tenterhooks the whole time. She didn’t hang up and neither did Chloe.

“Damn it, how do none of the security officer’s keys work on the principal’s door!?” Chloe’s voice drifted through the speakers on Max’s phone.

Unaware that the lock on his office door was being picked at that very moment, Wells sat outside on the steps, looking troubled and deep in thought as he nursed his bottle of whiskey.

Sadly, in this and every other timeline Chloe’s lock picks proved ineffective.

“Chloe, Principal Wells is getting up to leave now, you should probably hurry.”

“Damnit!”

In the end, without Max’s powers, the dynamic duo never did get into the principal’s files. And that Friday, in parallel with dozens of other Maxes and Chloes, they left the world in each other’s arms, casualties of a multi-dimensional struggle against the great evil of Sean Prescott.

 

* * *

 

Thursday, April 22, 2013 – meanwhile, in the “original” timeline…

In the timeline from which Rachel’s ancestral guardian spirits had just rescued her, Nathan Prescott hurried to finish his first solo photo-shoot, determined to make his mentor proud despite the earlier bit of excitement. _Oops, not enough medicine… but I handled it all by myself! Take that, Dad!_ He was done within half an hour and sighed in relief as Rachel had not woken up or given any further resistance.

It was only after Nathan uploaded the photos to Jefferson’s computer and returned to pick up his unconscious model to send her back to school… that he noticed her hands and face had turned cold and distinctly bluish.

_No, no, no, no!_

After a few fruitless attempts at CPR, not daring to call 911 given the circumstances, Nathan had no choice but to admit his terrible failure to Jefferson.

Already angry to be disturbed from his sleep at the ungodly hour of 12:30am, Jefferson was even more apoplectic when Nathan sobbed out the reason for this emergency interruption. Mark Jefferson had had big plans for Rachel, his best subject ever. (Her being his secret lover had nothing to do with it; nothing at all.) Her death had not only risked the Dark Room operation, but also (more importantly) ruined his glorious artistic vision! Nevertheless, the ever-pragmatic Jefferson did his best to salvage what he could. Half an hour later, Jefferson clanged and banged down the steps into the Dark Room, his own camera ready. He took what photos he could with his late muse, strategically dimming the lights here and there and using masterful filtering and shadowing to compensate for the dead girl’s bluish coloration. Two hours later, he ordered Nathan to help dispose of the body at the junkyard. The sky was lightening with impending dawn by the time they had finished. Jefferson gave Nathan a ride back to school and a very stern warning never to steal his models without permission…

Neither Jefferson nor Nathan would ever know how close they’d come to disaster that very night. Had Jefferson not delayed the cover-up by another two hours (ignoring Nathan’s panic in the background) to maximize his last opportunity to add more pictures to Rachel’s red binder, he and Nathan would have arrived in the junkyard at 1:15am instead of 3:15am, and started carrying Rachel’s body and her phone across the junkyard soon after. At 1:20am, when Rachel’s waiting friend dialed her cellphone for the twenty-eighth time that night, the phone would have lit up right in Jefferson’s hands – just enough to illuminate a silhouette several meters away from a despondent and panicking Chloe Price, right where she would have seen it, crept forward to investigate, and overheard all of Jefferson’s quiet commands to Nathan as they began digging. The following Monday, when Rachel’s parents finally reported her missing, Chloe would have feared the worst and told the police department exactly where to look. With both Jefferson’s and Nathan’s footprints found on the body bag and on Rachel’s phone, the Prescotts would have used all their corrupt influence to protect Nathan and scapegoat Jefferson for the entire crime. Chloe, having never been victimized by Nathan in this timeline, would have gone along and testified against Jefferson, and perhaps even bonded with Nathan over their lonely and abusive home lives, despite her lingering suspicions about the depth of his involvement with Jefferson. The Pan Estates project would have gone ahead, and the fed-up Indian spirits would have sent a tornado to end the power of the Prescotts.

Sadly, none of Tobanga’s timelines would feature this particular sequence of events. Instead, this one left-behind Rachel would be the first to meet her birth mother, and her corresponding Chloe, having finally given up and fallen asleep crying around 3 in the morning, would be left to wait six months to find her missing soulmate – but not before being unknowingly split into another several dozen timelines by the combined efforts of multiple saviors, all using the same power originally given to Rachel.

 

* * *

 

Thursday, April 22, 2013 – aboveground, in the first new branch of time…

In the original timeline Rachel had unknowingly left behind, she’d made plans with Chloe months ago to leave right after graduating. But that Rachel hadn’t responded to Chloe’s final text before going to the fateful Vortex Club party – she’d still been agonizing over how she was going to ask Chloe to wait a bit longer, just until she could obtain Mr. Jefferson’s connections in the modeling industry and cultivate him as a new sugar daddy to replace Frank.

This time around, given a second chance, Rachel was much less eager for the escape of the party than she had been before. She looked again at the notification glowing brightly on her phone’s screen, and wondered if she should avoid tonight’s party entirely.

In the end, after much hesitation, Rachel showed up at the Vortex party, about twenty minutes later than she had in the other timeline. She decided that she had to know whether Nathan really was going to kidnap her; if he was, she’d have to find out whether Mr. Jefferson was in on it. With her practiced calm exterior concealing her shaking nerves, Rachel glided across the gymnasium floor exchanging pleasantries, then took the empty seat next to Hayden, Zach, Dana, and Nathan, made idle chatter and waited for Nathan to get up and bring them some drinks as he had last time.

This time, after Nathan set down her red plastic cup on the table, Rachel pretended to receive a text on her phone and then apologetically announced her departure, leaving her drink untouched. The flash of disappointment on Nathan’s face was the last confirmation Rachel needed. She hurried back to her dorm room, heart hammering in her chest, finally breathing a sigh of relief as she entered her room and locked the door behind her.

_Now what?_

 

Friday, April 23, 2013 – in the second day of the new timeline…

The first rays of dawn sunrise awoke Rachel from an uneasy sleep. After evading Nathan’s dosing attempt, she had begged off her planned midnight rendezvous with Chloe, using the half-true excuse of “not feeling well,” but with her new doubts about relying on Mr. Jefferson she was also starting to doubt how much longer she could afford to hide things from Chloe.

She replayed the events of the previous night in her mind. She’d gone to the party, gotten drugged by Nathan and tied up in the Dark Room he was apparently borrowing from Mr. Jefferson, then somehow jumped back in time and managed to avoid being kidnapped the second time around.

_Can I rewind time?_

Rachel took out her phone and set the time to display hours-minutes-seconds. She watched the seconds tick by, one by one, and then concentrated, trying to remember how she’d felt in the Dark Room, scrambling against the wall while desperately trying to delay Nathan from re-drugging her…

On her phone screen, the seconds started to count down instead of up.

_Oh my god._

Rachel devised a few other tests for her power. She wrote a few lines in her journal, then rewinded and watched the marks disappear from the page. She went to class that morning, rewound partway through a lecture, and then watched history repeat itself.

Now she had no excuse to stall Chloe any longer. With her new powers, she could come clean to Chloe and then take it back if Chloe reacted badly. (Tragically, like all those after her, Rachel would never know until after her own death how many alternate selves she’d left behind to suffer the consequences of her “experiments.”)

As Mrs. Hoida continued her lecture, Rachel typed out a text under her desk to meet Chloe at the diner for lunch in half an hour. Chloe’s reply arrived only eight seconds later – fast even for her. Rachel let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding as she looked up, tuned out the class and tried to come up with some way out of the hole she’d dug herself over the last year.

 

Later that afternoon in the same timeline…

Rachel curled up on her bed in fetal position, her pillow wet with tears, staring through her blurry eyes at one of her photos with Chloe from happier times many months ago.

Twelve successive attempts to explain herself to Chloe had left her nose hemorrhaging and her head throbbing to the point of near explosion. No matter how she tried to spin things, Chloe inevitably saw right through her excuses. And for the first time in years Rachel was utterly unable to blame anyone else except herself. Rachel was the best when it came to self-deception, but even her prodigious skill could not get around the hard fact that Chloe had asked her point-blank about Frank more than half a year earlier. In the end, Rachel’s worst fears were brought about by precisely her attempts to avoid them.

After Chloe stormed out of the diner for the eleventh time, Rachel knew the game was up. She decided she’d tried her best and clearly it hadn’t worked, so she would just not tell Chloe after all and hope to run away from everything in another few weeks. On her twelfth attempt at this particular lunch, Rachel acted like her old self and kept Chloe busy with planning their move to Los Angeles. It was only when they parted, and Rachel saw how happy Chloe was with their dream within reach – the months of suppressed guilt inside Rachel reared up in a tidal wave that overwhelmed her all at once. She’d hurriedly said goodbye to Chloe and rushed back to her dorm room. She checked her phone, confirmed she had a couple hours free to cry before her appointment with Jefferson that evening, and then…

It could have been minutes or hours later, Rachel wasn’t sure exactly, but as she sobbed in her bed, wishing she could go back six months to tell Chloe everything she’d been afraid to say before, the edges of the photo in front of her started to warp and faint voices seemed to issue forth from inside the picture as Rachel’s world went white… 

The flash faded, revealing Rachel's junkyard hideout around her as Chloe's Polaroid spit out the exact photo she'd just been looking at. Once Rachel realized where and _when_ she was, she promptly took the chance to correct the new greatest regret of her life. Chloe was still quite upset, and said she’d have to think about it – but she appreciated Rachel telling her first, and Rachel’s heart twisted at the thought that no one else would ever do such a thing for Chloe. Rachel promised they’d still go to Los Angeles together if Chloe wanted to, and meant every word of it. Then, she left herself a quick note in her diary to avoid getting involved with Jefferson and Nathan, as well as tips for escaping in case it became necessary.

Rachel returned back to her “own” time in April to find that in her absence she’d actually gotten Jefferson busted. Her autopilot-self had managed to put together the clues left in her diary with a drugging incident that happened to another Blackwell student she knew, along with some of Nathan’s unusual behavior around her; she’d then turned in both Nathan and Jefferson, allowing the Prescott-owned police to cast Nathan as the victim and put Jefferson away for life. Rachel would never know, until after her death, that in saving those innocent girls she’d also inadvertently kept Arcadia Bay on the path towards apocalypse – and that her own powers would be the key that unlocked it all.

Rachel walked proudly at her graduation and drove away in Chloe’s truck the very next day. In the coming months, Rachel would face the trials and tribulations of Los Angeles, armed with her rewind powers and one Chloe after another at her side. She unknowingly left other Rachels behind to deal with every setback and danger, and to cry over the Chloes lost to pile-ups on the 405, or gang crossfire in the only parts of Los Angeles they could afford to live in on minimum wage, or 8.0-Richter earthquakes that swallowed entire blocks, or freak medical complications from measles outbreaks at Disneyland. It was some other Autopilot-Rachel who was left to face being blacklisted from the modeling industry after refusing to sleep with a highly respected casting director. It was some other Auto-Rachel who caught HIV from that same casting director when she gave in to him for the sake of her career. Some other Rachel who was paralyzed from the neck down after tripping and falling off the catwalk when her high heels broke. Some other Rachel who became so successful as a model that an obsessed fanboy broke into her new house to kidnap her. Some other Rachel who died in a stunt accident on the set of a new Hollywood action movie, leaving some other Chloe to cry alone in an unfamiliar city far from home.

But even Rachel’s powers couldn’t solve everything. Chloe began to suspect that Rachel was rewinding all their arguments. And, to Chloe’s extra rage and Rachel’s shame, Rachel finally admitted that this was the fourth time they’d had some version of this fight leading to Chloe walking out… though she swore that from this time on, she would only use her powers to keep either them from getting physically hurt, and that she’d also disclose each time she rewinded. (What the “main” Rachel would never know, as a result of her own fear of truly letting Chloe go, was that in each of the four “breakup” timelines she left behind, Chloe ultimately ended up reconciling with a newly powerless Rachel, and they’d gone on to live happily ever after until both of them died in a gas main explosion two weeks later.)

At one point Chloe and Rachel had such a big fight that Rachel photo-jumped all the way back to that fateful April of 2013 to give up her California dream and stay in Arcadia Bay, where Frank still loved her. Rachel and Frank started a dog shelter together, which he maintained full time while Rachel and Chloe both enrolled part-time at Bay City College. Rachel even started going to church for Frank’s sake, and Chloe then came along to be with Rachel, significantly boosting the small number of older teenagers and young adults in the congregation. When Stella Hill tried to buy more Adderall from Frank in preparation for the upcoming school year, he sent her to Rachel for tutoring instead, explaining that he wanted both of them to “enter the Lord’s house justified”.

That September, Rachel and Chloe were joined in the back corner of the pews by newly enrolled Blackwell students Kate Marsh and Alyssa Anderson. Even though Rachel and Chloe had only started coming a month ago, they introduced themselves to welcome the new girls. And that was when Kate recognized Chloe’s name – Kate had recently befriended a classmate named Max, she said; this Max had applied to Blackwell before the Jefferson scandal broke, but she’d come anyway, both for the photography program and because she’d once had a best friend in Arcadia Bay before her parents moved five years ago…

Chloe was hesitant to met Max again, but Rachel could tell she really wanted to, and encouraged her. A few weeks later, the two pirates were inseparable and Rachel almost regretted helping them back together. Almost.

It was at this point that the above Rachel suddenly blacked out as the “real” Rachel flashed forward again from her photo-jump and took over. Much to her surprise, Rachel found herself sitting at church, in her Sunday best, sandwiched between Frank and Chloe. This Rachel, unlike the self she’d just taken over, had never met Max or Kate, and gave little notice to the two girls sitting on the other side of Chloe, although the mousy brunette did look slightly familiar (only later would Rachel realize that she was the one in Chloe’s childhood pictures, which Chloe had once shown to Rachel three years ago in a much darker time of her life).

This “Alpha” Rachel did, however, do a double take at the sight of Chloe next to her in a very conservative, high-necked black funeral dress which vividly clashed with her bright blue hair and bullet necklace. Chloe noticed Rachel’s strange behavior. “Rach, are you okay?” she whispered, letting the pastor drone on in the background.

“I’m fine,” Rachel whispered back, deciding to wait until after the service to learn more about what she’d wrought. Later that day, she took Chloe aside and confessed everything. Chloe, of course, demanded proof – which Rachel promptly gave, though unknowingly leaving behind a few powerless copies of herself to look like fools in the process.

“You have to tell Frank,” Chloe said, and Rachel’s heart warmed at this confirmation that she’d made the right choice staying with Frank. But Frank turned out to be much less accepting than Chloe when Rachel explained how she’d changed space and time to give them a chance, at the cost of her last six months of memories. “I want _my_ Rachel back!” Frank snarled at her, beans forgotten on the table as he stormed off to chill with a joint. Awoken by the commotion, Pompidou looked up at Frank’s retreating back, then padded over and nuzzled Rachel affectionately.

Chloe reached over, touching Rachel’s shoulder lightly, but Rachel noticed Chloe’s slight hesitation as she did this. “He’ll come around,” Chloe reassured, “we just need to give him some space.”

They decided to go out for dinner, but first Rachel needed to quickly use the bathroom… and her heart almost jumped right out of her at the sight of a positive pregnancy test right by the sink.

“Chloe,” Rachel asked, voice quivering, “is this…?” She held up the pregnancy test. Chloe mimed smacking her head. “Crap, I forgot to mention that!” Then she smiled wickedly. “Yep, you just told me and Frank this morning. Isn’t it exciting?” Chloe winked, enjoying Rachel’s breakdown. “Sorry, uh…” Chloe got serious again, “yeah, you’re probably not as excited as our Rach was… not that she was excited or anything—“

Rachel battled through the following day, alternately ravenous and then struggling not to throw up as her newly pregnant body rejected one offering after another. Frank was still treating her coldly, but making some effort to be civil, insisting that Rachel eat for the baby no matter how she felt.

In the end, Chloe was right. By Thursday Frank had warmed up, admitting to Rachel that she was still the best thing that ever happened to him, and that he still loved her and their new child, even though her memories were full of events from the other timelines that hadn’t happened. All of them missed the brief double moon that day, being indoors at the moment it happened.

But on Friday, October 11, with little warning, clouds blotted out the sun and a monster thunderstorm cluttered every street with debris, paralyzing the entire town. Rachel and Chloe were trapped at the community college, several blocks away from Frank, who’d joined a number of townsfolk sheltering at the Two Whales, and Max, who was still in the Blackwell dorms with the other students.

Then the tornado came, so big around that it seemed to cross most of the horizon. Rachel finally admitted the extent of feelings she’d developed, and after pulling up a selfie from the start of the week, she gave Chloe one last kiss before photo-jumping back to warn past-Chloe about the storm.

The Rachel left behind in the doomed timeline, having been blacked out for five days, awoke just in time for her Chloe to fill her in on the mysterious “other Rachel” that had been hijacking her. Her immediate phone call to Frank did not go through as the cell towers had collapsed. Minutes later, the entire building disintegrated as the tornado passed nearby.

As it turned out, this was the only timeline out of hundreds to have a Chloe, Rachel, and Max from the same timeline all reunited in heaven. This particular Chloe, Rachel, and Max were indeed among the precious few versions of themselves to share the kingdom of Christ with hundreds of Franks and Joyces and Kates… though when they saw what their counterparts were doing in hell, they had to admit that everyone did end up happy. Even when it took millennia.

The Rachel who kept photo-jumping landed back at the beginning of that week. On Monday, October 7, she retold the aforementioned events to yet another Chloe, and the two of them set about recruiting everyone they could to help evacuate the town. They ultimately were able to save their parents and Frank, as well as Max and her friends, and around 700 more. But without revealing Rachel’s powers, there was nothing more they could do.

Death desperately wanted Rachel, but she repeatedly refused him, making it clear with her powers that she preferred to stay with Frank and Chloe and Max in the mortal world. In his jealousy, Death attempted to eliminate all those who held Rachel’s affections. An epic courtship ensued for the following several months, and Rachel was compelled to share her secret with those she hoped to protect from her aggressive suitor. But at last, he caught up to them, with a freak hurricane aimed at the teeming masses of Los Angeles; and Rachel leaped out of the timeline in which an entire city was leveled, and created another timeline in which she alone rented a boat from the docks, and sailed out alone to offer up herself, and her powers, back to the place where they’d come from.

Rachel’s own story was finally at an end. Her powers, however, would reverberate through all time and space, taking on a life of their own.

 

* * *

 

Monday, October 7 – in one of the Rachel-less timelines left behind…

 

BANG!

 

Already stumbling backwards after a push from Chloe, Nathan startled as the explosion propelled his gun back into his hand.

_Shit! I didn’t pull the trigger! I didn’t!_

But when he’d regained his bearings and glanced up again, there was the blue-haired girl sprawled out at his feet, dead as a doornail, blood pouring out of a big hole in her stomach.

_Fuuuuuck!!!_

_Please, no! I didn’t mean to!_

In a panic, Nathan knelt down, trying to shake Chloe awake, though even as he did he already had a feeling he was just trying to prolong his denial of the inevitable.

_Please no don’t be dead! No one’s going to believe it was an accident. Fuck!_

Anything short of murder Nathan had always known he could get away with… but no amount of Prescott money could get him out of this one. Not at Blackwell right after classes, where the only escape route would be instantly covered by witnesses the moment a gunshot went off, too many to be paid off or intimidated.

The bathroom door banged open and Nathan looked up in panic to see David Madsen looming over him, deadly realization setting in on his face… time seemed to slow down…

In slower and slower motion Nathan scrambled backwards on the floor, futilely delaying the inevitable…

…and then time ground to a halt and for a moment Nathan saw everything freeze around him – then suddenly accelerate backwards. Mr. Madsen backpedaled rapidly out of the bathroom, the puddle of blood on the floor shrank away, Chloe magically rose sideways off the floor as if lifted by an invisible force –

The images flashed before Nathan’s eyes and then suddenly, he was leaning over the sink, looking at himself in the mirror, as if nothing had happened.

Nathan was about to look around in confusion when a familiar voice rang out behind him –

“I hope you checked the perimeter, as my step-ass would say. Now, let's talk bidness.”

Nathan whirled around in shock to face a very alive Chloe who clearly had no idea what was about to happen – or had just happened, depending on one’s point of view.

“What the fuck?!”

Nathan didn’t even realize he’d spilled his thoughts out loud until Chloe replied, unimpressed. “Don’t play dumb, Prescott. You got hella cash, and you’re gonna give me some.”

Nathan turned to look at himself in the mirror. Chloe loomed over him from one side, trying to be intimidating. _Don’t stress, Nathan. You know something she doesn’t. And this time, you’re going to not fuck this up, and scare her off_ without _actually shooting her. Okay?_

Nathan took a deep breath and tried to remember what he’d said last time. “That’s my family, not me.”

“Oh, boo hoo, poor little rich kid. I know you’ve been pumpin' drugs 'n' shit to kids around here. I bet your respectable family would help me out if I went to them. Man, I can see the headlines now…”

Nathan did his best to say the same things he’d said before, mentally checking off Chloe’s responses, which were essentially the same as last time. At the right time, Nathan drew his gun. Things went exactly as Nathan had foreseen…

“Nobody would ever even miss your "punk ass" would they?”

“Get that gun away from me, psycho!”

At the key moment, anticipating Chloe’s shove, Nathan jumped back just in time, leaving Chloe’s hands pushing at nothing but air. He leveled his pistol at Chloe’s face.

“Watch it, Price.” Nathan growled as menacingly as he could. “Now go away before I – make – you.”

Nathan watched the fright draining away from Chloe’s expression, replaced by resignation. But any sense of relief on his part was shattered by Chloe’s next words.

“So make me,” she goaded. “Maybe that’s what it’ll take for me to finally find Rachel again.”

Nathan’s mouth dropped open in shock, before he hurriedly shut it, trying to keep his poker face – but the damage was done. Chloe sensed her advantage and pressed it.

“Yeah, that’s right. I have nothing to live for anymore. So go ahead and shoot me. Or give me a reason to live. I don’t care which.”

_Crap, that did not work at all!_ Nathan thought, still shocked as he stepped back and gradually lowered his pistol. “I’m not giving you anything,” he insisted, but the words were hollow. He was already wondering if it might be to his advantage to just pay her off rather than having to find a good opportunity to silence her without getting in trouble for the murder.

Chloe fixed him with a skeptical look, taking a step forward. Nathan hurriedly raised his gun to try to keep her back. Inside himself he was laughing at the irony, as Chloe stared expectantly at him around the barrel of his gun, making no move to avoid a potential bullet. _If only you knew, Price… you’d be the one in jail for murdering_ me _by now…_

Like the other time-travelers before him, Nathan would only encounter years later the full consequences of his actions. But for the moment, he’d avoided an immediate Game Over.

In dozens of parallel timelines, dozens of Nathans and Maxes and Chloes came together in one all-important school bathroom to decide the fates of thousands of lives. But in almost every single one of those timelines, as subjects as well as agents of fate, they would end up doing exactly as Tobanga and his people hoped; and in return almost all of them would find their permanent home with Tobanga’s people, confined yet free at last.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The very last timeline shown, in which Nathan gets his power, represents a branch out of the timeline in which Alpha Chloe is sacrificing herself from 3 years in the future (previously mentioned in chapter 3). Nathan hard-rewinds to right before the confrontation, which creates a new timeline with a new "at-her-lowest-point" Chloe (equivalent to the one Alpha Chloe hijacked by photo-jumping back), whom Nathan then avoids accidentally shooting.
> 
> As you may have realized, the original LiS S1 represents the continuation of the timeline where Rachel did *not* get hard-rewinded out of the Dark Room and was therefore overdosed by Nathan shortly after the 17 missed calls at the end of BtS. The thing is, in that timeline, Chloe did not stop at 17 calls. If there are 17 missed calls, then the active call at the end of BtS is Chloe's 18th attempt. I think Chloe called at least 30 times and left at least 10 voicemails, in addition to calling the Ambers and Blackwell... but tragically, none of them had any clue.


End file.
